BSG23: Zero Hour
by kayandrews
Summary: The Crew of the Battlestar Olympia rushes to Picon after learning of the attacks. When it becomes clear that Colonial forces have lost, the Commander must makes the call to leave the system and run.


Chapter One

"Ladies and Gentleman, good afternoon and welcome on board the BS twenty-three: Battlestar Olympia. In case you hadn't noticed this ship is one of a kind still left in the fleet," Captain Miller addressed the newly arrived pilots in the spartan briefing room. It was hot and stuffy as the sixty bodies quickly overwhelmed the old ship's ventilation system. Captain Miller was only a head taller than the podium and only thirty-two, but flecks of grey were already beginning to appear in his short obsidian buzz cut.

"Same lecture as last year?" a familiar voice called out from the back row.

Miller looked over the crowd. The old timers always sat in the back and heckled this speech every six months. They were reservists, former pilots that left the military ranks to pursue higher paying civilian jobs, but still required by Colonial law to maintain their basic combat proficiency for a decade after leaving the service. Finally his eye's caught the culprit: Major "Stubby" Loren.

Miller sighed already knowing he was defeated before this training cruise left orbit. "Yes, I know some of you have heard this little speech before. Some, too many times, but there are a lot of fresh faces in here that haven't. So with all do respect, Sirs, please keep the heckling to a minimum back there."

Miller was the active Commander Air Group, but most of the veterans outranked him. Miller had the final call over who flew while aboard his ship, but it was always uneasy operating out of sync with the normal chain of command. His only saving grace was knowing the Old Man would back him if push came to shove.

"You're the CAG," Stubby snickered with a wily grin.

Miller heard the old pressure door screech open and the Commander walk in. "Attention on deck!" Miller said standing to attention as the Old Man walked around the corner. The rest of the room quickly rose to attention.

"As you were," the Old Man dismissed the formalities. "I am Commander Belu and this is my ship. Captain Miller has served with me now for four tours and while some of you may outrank him, he is the CAG, and will be treated as such. He has final call on all flight operations, regardless of rank. I know this seems contrary to the chain of command, but he's here day in and day out and that takes seniority in my book. Any questions?"

Belu looked up and glared at the last two rows full of reservists. Many of the faces he recognized, his eyes focusing on those individuals who had problems with this arrangement in the past. At this point, those senior pilots knew on who's side Belu would come down on and it was not theirs.

"Good," Belu turned to Miller, "Carry on."

"Thank you, sir," Miller said with his chin raised to parade perfection and snapped the Old Man another salute. Belu gave a quick wave back and headed for the still open pressure door.

"Right, as the man said," Miller stated now looking down into the first few rows of rooks and cadets from the Academy. "I am Captain Miller. I'm the lead instructor on board Olympia and the CAG."

Olympia Corridor

Outside the briefing room Major Barret Grant stood with his hands tucked behind his back as the Commander walked out into the corridor. Belu loosened up to his normal casual self around his everyday crew. "Something wrong Mister Grant?"

"How could you tell, Sir?"

"Because your standing like that. Problems with the way I run my ship?" Belu asked as they began to walk back towards CIC.

"Technically, sir, under regulations, they do outrank him...reservists or not," Grant Challenged.

"If we followed the regs to the letter, you wouldn't be the XO, Major," Belu retorted. "Your lucky that the Admiral likes you and got you fast tracked. You'll have one of these before most people your age make Colonel."

"I'm quite aware of the situation, sir," Grant hesitated visibly uncomfortable with the fact the Commander was right: Grant should not technically be the XO.

"I know you are and you don't like it," Belu smirked. "Another reason why the Admiral had you placed under my tutelage."

"And why is that exactly?"

"Because, I make you uncomfortable. Learning how to deal with uncomfortable situations is what being a Commander is all about, Major," Commander Belu told the Major. This was the second cruise with the Major aboard, but the first with Grant as the XO.

"Something I guess I still have to learn," the Major admitted.

"Something only experience teaches, Major," Belu replied.

pilot briefing room

Miller looked up at the projection booth. The copper haired Lt. Julie "Jewels" McMillan was standing next to the slide projector. With just a nod, Jewels dimmed the lights and fired up the projector. As the lamp glow warmed, the screen behind Miller filled with a three pain drawing of the Olympia from the top, side, and front with arrows pointing to the various parts of the ship.

"Flip to page one in your guides. This is the Olympia. Last of her class still in service with the fleet, even if it is with the active reserves," Miller told the group. "A ship is a living creature, or at least I think so, and it's important to know about her history."

"And a fine history it is, Captain," Major Loren shouted from the back.

Miller rolled his eyes for a moment. The room was too dark for old men in the back to see, but the younger mark one eyeballs caught the look.

Miller gave Jewels another cue to advance the show one slide. "History can be boring so this is the short, short version," Miller began. "Olympia was one of four ships of her class built and commissioned in the last days of the Cylon War. She was originally designed as a heavy cruiser back when the colonies were busy fighting each other. During the Cylon War the Twelve Colonies needed Battlestars, so the designs were modified, flight pods added, and thus the Midway class was born."

"You left out the part about her being a piss poor design," Major Loren hauntingly mocked. "You know, the reason why the space cadets down there were brought on board with shuttles instead of flying their own training birds."

"And don't forget the part about this being a 'baby Battlestar'. Twenty percent smaller with the same number of crew as other battlestars of her era. Which is to say, things are cramp...really cramp," another reservist added.

"And smelly too. The Head tends to back up," a third chimed in.

Major Loren and the others was beginning to get on the CAG's nerves. Miller knew exactly who the voices belonged too as the man did this every year. Loren was one of the pilots who did not take kindly to taking orders from a junior officer.

"I was just getting to that part, Sir," Miller shot back. "As such the Olympia has some strengths, basically her bow guns can kill anything the Cylons can throw at her, but she also has character."

"Yeah, lot's of character, little class," another voice openly mocked. It gained a few chuckles from the old vets. The cadets and rooks were looking at each other unsure how exactly to react. Everything that had happened so far was so contrary to what they had been taught. Normally a Captain could not order around a Major nor a pilot talk back to the CAG.

"Say what you will, but here is the quick list," Miller nodded to flip to the next slide. An image from a Mercury class Landing Deck filled the screen. "This is what a regular combat landing approach angle looks like for most ships in the fleet. Notice the five degree angle of attack. Next Slide."

The image shifted showing the wide, but narrow, landing slits of the Olympia. "This is what a combat landing looks like on Olympia. Note the approach angle is less than two degrees. This is what we call the dead on or dead approach. It takes practice to get used to it because the nose of your viper blocks your view. You have to be dead on and trust your instruments or your dead. Believe me, I've written my fair share of letters to the next of kin of nuggets that fraked it up."

Miller motioned for Jewels to begin the next sequence of slides. The CAG stood at the podium in silence as Julie counted to three in her head and flipped to slide after slide of wrecked vipers, charred and mangled bodies, and flag draped body bags. At least the vets were always quite during this portion of the presentation. While they may have been a smart ass bunch through the rest of the show, they all had respect for their fallen comrades.

Belu's Wardroom

Belu sat hunched over all the pre launch paperwork still sitting on his desk. There was over two hundred sheets of paper in the pile, most needing initials or signatures. Everything from supply manifests to last minute transfers to the daily communications reports. A tap on the pressure door was a welcome relief.

"Enter," Belu belched.

The pressure door opened revealing the young Lt. Rhodes. He was only twenty-five and received his commission through ROTC and was one of the finest young officers the Old Man had ever seen in his thirty-six year career.

Rhodes cautiously approached the desk as the Old Man leaned back and offered the young man a seat. "Sir, I have the Mid Watch communications reports. Nothing out of the ordinary," Rhodes handed the paper to the Old Man.

"Keep it," Belu snickered. "Last thing i need is more paper around here. So this is your last cruise..."

"Aye, sir," Rhodes answered shyly. He kept fidgeting with a small box in his other hand. Something the Old Man sat there waiting for the Lieutenant to spill the beans. "And these are for you, Sir, complements of the wife."

"Trying to bribe your way to Captain?" Belu snorted taking the small box. He unsnapped the lid and looked inside. It was full of homemade sweets, something he never really got to savour these days. The Commander looked up and smiled, tell the wife thanks when we get back. "I take it she's happy about the transfer."

"Indeed. I have to thank you..."

"No," Belu interrupted, "No need. You are one hell of an officer, even if your just in uniform for three more years. Things run a hell of a lot smoother on board with you on top of everything. You're far more organized than I'll ever be and you've learned all you can here."

"That's not true, still I lot I could learn..."

"From a crusty old Commander like me?" Belu shook his head, "No. You'll make a perfect staff officer for Picon Fleet Headquarters. Granted, the desk get's old, but at least you'll be home for dinner and watch your kids grow up."

Rhodes nodded in agreement. He was in his second year of college when she got pregnant with their first child. Joining the Fleet provided extra money for college and living expenses without extra work at the time. He was now working off that debt with a five year hitch as an officer.

Belu continued, "Few things more important than family."

Rhodes knew what he meant. While the Old Man never married nor had kids, the fleet, the ship, and its crew became his family. The crew functioned like a family and it was something that Rhodes began to understand in what was now his last days on board ship.

"No, sir, there really isn't," Rhodes admitted. "I'd better head back to CIC. I left a non-com in charge."

"Who?"

"Kyle, sir," Lt. Rhodes answered.

"Kyle has twenty years in and it's his last cruise too before retirement. Probably knows more than both of us," Belu remarked. "Dismissed, Lieutenant...and be sure to tell the wife thanks for the treats."

pilot mess

"What the frak is this: Junior High?" Midshipmen Lance asked as he sat down at a table full of other Academy Cadets. "I mean look around. All the regulars are sitting over in that corner, all the instructors at that table, all the old guys in the other corner, and all of us cadets here."

"What was that, Midshipmen!" one of the Old Guys yelled from across the room. "My eye's may not be perfect anymore...guess that's why the hearing's improved."

"Oh, like your wife would say that," one of the other older reserve pilots badgered his wingman of over a decade.

"Yeah, my sister says that all the time," Ensign Kelly "Slate" Kraikos yelled at the man.

The old man did a double take. "Slate, that you? What the hell are you doing here?"

"Flight instructor," Slate retorted showing off the patch.

The old man looked around, "How they hell you swing that one? You're not even a junior L-T yet!"

"Yeah, I need three more weeks to get the promotion...I know, but the Old Man said he didn't care and was impressed," Slate's shrugged her short, broad shoulders, "Old Man said I had higher marks than someone named Starbuck."

Loren shouted across the room, "Starbuck, who the hell is that?"

Slate shrugged, "I dunno."

"Well, I'll be keeping my eyes on you little Miss...I know better..." Loren raised his glass in toast.

Miller and Jewels watched as the Ensign slid back around to face them and chat about the planned training missions.

"You know Major Loren?" Miller asked.

"Yeah, he's my brother-in-law," Slate snipped in her whiny, nasally, high pitch voice. "Can be a bit of a jerk sometimes, but nice enough. Better than the rest of the losers my sister dated."

"Sister, how many you have?" Jewels asked taking a swig of beer. "I got two myself, both older, and a younger brother."

"Two," Slate held up her fingers, "One older, one younger, and believe it or not I'm the good one. His wife, my older sister, is a complete bitch and my younger sister's a brat."

Miller and Jewels looked at each other. They had served along side each other for almost half a decade now and knew the other's reactions intuitively.

"Sounds like a lovely family," Jewels offered sardonically just before downing another swig and almost gaging. "Ick, warm..."

"Complaining about warm beer? I ever..." Miller began.

"Every three weeks," Jewels interrupted the CAG and then turned to Slate, "See he went to Aquaria and apparently warm beer is all the rage there. Crazy Aquarians wouldn't know a good beer from dirty Head water."

Slate drank about half her beer in a single gulp and then wiped her lips with her uniform sleeve. Miller leaned back and just raised an eyebrow knowing laundry was going to love her.

Lt. Kelly "Slate" Kraikos slammed the glass back on the wire-mesh table and offered, "Well my mother's a push over and my father's a bad drunk that hit us growing up. Wonder any of us actually survived as well as we have."

There was a moment of awkward silence at the table. Miller could not help but think the old adage was true: there were no secrets aboard a Battlestar. "Sooo..." Miller began pausing for effect, "If he was abusive, why not say something to the authorities?"

Slate sat there a moment and then shrugged, "Why? So he could go to jail and leave the family destitute. He earned a lot of money working in the mines and gave us a comfortable lifestyle...just not a comfortable life."

"That why you joined the Fleet?" Jewels asked.

"Mostly," Slate answered. "Always wanted to be a pilot."

"How did you get in, aren't you..." Miller began.

"A little short?" Slate sat up tall. She made a tiny gap with her index finger and thumb about two centimeters long, "Guilty, short by this much. Luckily for me the doctor giving the flight physicals knew the situation and made me just tall enough on the forms."

"And no one's given you any fuss since?" Jewels asked. Slate shook her head. Jewels took another gulp to finish her beer adding under her breath, "Lucky little fraker."

Slate shrugged, "Gave me a chance and I took it. I've earned everything to this point the hard way."

"Don't blame ya," Miller cocked his head in approval. Jewels just glared at the CAG. She could tolerate bending of rules, but it never happened for her and Miller had seen it time and time again. Anytime she stepped just the slightest bit out of line, someone always hammered her back.

"Enough about me, I take it you two know each other," Slate said suggestively.

"Hope so, we've only been together for six years," Miller offered. Jewels gave the CAG another, darker glare. "Not like that," Miller winced realizing how his last remark came off, "I mean we've served together for six years."

"Better," Jewels muttered to the CAG.

"So what's your call sign, Sir," Slate asked the CAG.

"Akhenaton," Miller said proudly.

"Akka...what?" Slate shook her head.

"Akhenaton," Jewels mumbled. "We call him Aten on the wireless. No one can pronounce the full version."

"How the hell did you get that name?" Slate wondered. "I mean who at the academy did you piss on to get fraked over like that."

Jewels snorted drawing the attention of the room to her, at least from the Cadets' table as well as the old men. It was something that happened when she tried to laugh and breathe at the same time.

"Well..." Miller began.

"No, no, no, no," Jewels interjected between laughs, "You have to let me tell this one."

Miller sat back and looked around exhaling a deep breath and decided to take it like a man. Jewels loved to tell the story, at least the version she heard at the academy two years his junior.

"Not telling how the Captain got his callsign again are you?" Charmer interrupted.

Miller looked up, "Speak of the devil himself."

Charmer turned to the auburn haired young woman and introduced himself, "I'm Lt. Charles Brackov the Third, callsign Charmer."

Slate lifted her empty glass in salute. "Good to meet you," she said looking over his uniform noting the flight instructor patch was missing from his uniform. "You a flight instructor?"

"Me?" Charmer said almost taken back. "Oh no, I'm the one that's always one mistake away from getting the wings taken away."

"Speaking of which, if you don't pass grade this time they'll be yanking the whole uniform," Miller warned his friend.

"About time," Charmer replied smugly. "Finally get to go on and finish my PhD."

"Which you haven't started yet," Miller reminded the pilot.

"No," Charmer admitted, "But I have my Masters."

"How you managed to get the fleet to give you two years off for that," Jewels shook her head drinking the last gulp of of her beer.

"Old man's an Admiral," Charmer said.

Jewels spit the beer back into her mug. At least most of it, some of the spray landed over on the CAG. "Your Old Man is an Admiral? There's no Admiral Brackov's."

"That's because his birth name is Charles Nagala. Changed it after his step father adopted him," Miller said.

Jewels turned to the CAG and snarled, "No secrets on a Battlestar indeed."

"Wasn't a secret. Just no one mentions it around here," Miller suggested.

Jewels thought about it for a moment. She had always heard that Brackov's father was big wig in political circles, or that he came from some big fancy family, but Nagala's kid...that just seemed impossible.

"Then how in the hell are you the third?" Slate demanded.

"My step dad's name was Charles," Charmer shrugged. "Junior."

Jewels was still shaking her head, "Nagala's kid, I didn't even know he had a kid."

"Well, he kind of disowned me after my mother ran off with a rich playboy. Actually they were fraking while he was on eighteen month patrols on board Atlantia," Charmer said. "I guess the divorce settlement said he'd pay for my education. Funny thing was it did not stipulate how," Charmer grinned.

"Fleet Education Fund," Slate offered a toast.

Charmer tipped his beer in response, "Fleet Education Fund. And to the last fraking cruise I ever have to make!"

"So why are they going to kick you out?" Slate wondered.

"Five years, no promotion," Charmer smiled. "They just won't offer to renew my hitch. And I'll be damned proud to start graduate school again. Speaking of which, there are some cute Midshipwomen I'm going to introduce myself too."

Slate and the rest of the table watched as Charmer made his way over to the Cadet's table and sat down next to two of the cuter women. "He knows that's against regs, right?" Slate questioned her superiors.

"Oh yeah," Jewels answered.

Slate smirked, "Like he's actually going to get one of them. Way out of his league." Charmer was far from the most attractive man in the room, not the worst either, just average.

Jewels looked at the CAG and replied, "I'd be willing to take that bet."

Miller leaned over to his newest flight instructor and whispered, "I wouldn't bet against Jewels." Jewels punched the CAG in the shoulder. "Ouch!"

"I could have made a quick fifty," Jewels complained. "And I hit you harder in the sparring room on a weekly basis...don't sit there can give me this ouch crap."

Slate turned around and watched Charmer in awe that the cadets were actually warming up to him as they began laughing. "You've got to be fraking kidding me. He's not even that cute..."

"Oh he has other assets," Jewels offered pouring herself another beer.

Miller playfully returned a slap on Jewel's shoulder. "What's the rule about staring?"

"Staring?" Slate questioned.

Jewels grinned, "You haven't been to the Pilot's Head yet, have you?" Slate shook her head. "It's Unisex. The rule is you don't stare."

"Ah," Slate nodded slowly. She had heard of unisex facilities on smaller and older ships before. Kelly also knew that people did, in fact, stare...and talked about it later. "Good package."

Jewel's eyes' lit up and nodded, "Oh yeah."

Miller slapped Jewels again, only this time in disgust. He recited the rule, "Not suppose to stare...and not to mention talk about it."

"Excuse me," Jewels, slightly buzzed, stopped the CAG. "Let's see here...there was the thirty-eight D's last cruise, that blonde with the thirty-four C's the time before that..."

"Enough," Miller ordered.

Jewels continued, "Oh and that one with the mosquito bites the time..."

"Okay, but she had a pretty face and great hair...hell even you admitted that," Miller challenged. "But seriously, enough already." Miller said jumping up. "It's been fun ladies. See you both at the Eight O'Clocks. We begin simulation training in the morning." The CAG stood up and walked out of the Pilot's Mess.

Jewels and Slate waited for the CAG to the leave the room setting in silence for a few minutes.

"So, um..." Slate began.

"Smallest on the flight deck," Jewels answered.

"And the mosquito bites?" Slate inquired.

"Actually, she was very attractive...only she smoked about a pack a day. Complete turn off to the CAG," Jewels answered pulling out a box of cigarettes and lit one up.

"Not going to offer me one?" Slate demanded. Jewels handed Slate the pack and lighter. "Thanks."

"Don't mention it."

"Didn't know policy around here," Slate said.

"Policy is, smoke when the CAG's not around. He'll never stop griping about it if he catches you," Jewels answered.

Belu's Wardroom

"Rhodes is getting a transfer!" Grant barked to the Old Man in the wardroom. It was empty save the two.

"I don't recall giving you permission to speak freely," Belu condemned the young officer.

"I don't recall ever needing it, Sir," Grant barked. "I've been trying to get into staff for five years. Each time they tell me I need more time out on the line."

"That's the truth," Belu retorted. "You want one of these some day, am I right Major?"

Major Barret Grant stood there towering over the former pilot. Grant had been a Command Officer since day one in the Fleet Academy. He never had the eyesight and was too tall to be a pilot, almost a death crawl to a long term military career. The current command structure was stacked against non-pilots, but he was determined to some day have his own Battlestar.

"Major you are here to learn the art of command. You already know the book. Nothing working behind the desk can do you to someday take command of your own ship. It's something that takes time to mold and there is no book to read. Experience is the only teacher," Belu told the Major. "At least you have the common sense to raise the questions here in private and not in front of the crew in CIC, like some other of my former XO's. You have potential if you can keep your head from overruling your better judgement."

"Aye, Sir," Grant said calming down. "May I ask why you approved his transfer?"

"You may," Belu answered.

Grant waited for a response, but he had his answer. The Major nodded and began to head for the door.

"He has a wife, two kids, and no business being out here. He's not career military," Belu told the Major. "Let him be with his family. They mean more to him than the Uniform."

Grant turned around and stood tall. "I understand, Sir," Grant snapped a salute. "Thanks for telling me."

Belu nodded in acknowledgment and waited for the door to shut and seal behind the XO. "Thank the Gods he's not in command yet," Belu uttered to himself.

Briefing Room

Miller sat back in the stiff, old, metal chairs with well worn seat cushions in the briefing room. A projector was displaying a the movements of every object in the simulation. He sat there looking up with a bag of chips from the mess in one hand and a cup of fleet oil in the other.

"Yuk," Jewels protested as she came in still dressed in her flight suit. "Fleet oil gets worse every day."

"Must have been some of the cadet's that made this batch," Miller lamented. "Take a seat, how was the routine CAP?"

"Routine," Jewels answered. "Three hours of nothing, but empty space. How's the combat simulations going?"

"So far," Miller paused to take another drink of coffee, "The Old guys are getting their asses handed to them by the Cadets...have to hand it to them, they know how to play war games."

"Yeah, tell me about it. Video games were still banned when I was young."

Jewels looked over at the CAG and messed with the growing area of grey hair on the side of the Miller's head, "You were young once?"

"Believe it or not, so were you," Miller reminded Jewels. "I can recall more than a few incidents I think we both regret."

"No, you regret, because we didn't invite you," Jewels countered. "Hate to break this to you, but your a bore."

"A bore?"

"Yes a bore. You're not even a fun drunk. You drink a bottle then start puking everywhere, then pass out," Jewels protested.

"I haven't done that in at least..."

"Six years," Jewels said. "Yeah, me neither. But those were the days."

"Why haven't you made Captain yet?"

"Nothing available, at least nothing in a cockpit. All the CAG positions in the fleet are filled and the Adar administration is talking about freezing the Battlestar Building program," Jewels admitted.

"Really? I know of at least two chances you turned down in past three months," Miller told her.

"Oh," Jewels pulled back shocked he knew. Both offers came through unofficial backwater channels. "Who told you?"

"The XO. Kept bitching how everyone was going to get off this ship but him," Miller snickered.

"You and Babyface don't get along," Jewels said.

"Really, two years and you just now figured that out?"

"Maybe because you nicknamed him Babyface?"

"Oh, come on, it was a joke that got out of hand. He should have never heard it."

"Until that fraking cadet ratted you out," Jewels smiled. "Whatever happened to him?"

"Killed. Training accident. Collided with another viper on landing on board the Pegasus," Miller told her.

"You keep tabs on all your former students, or just your enemies?"

"Just my enemies," the CAG admitted. Miller kept his eyes focused on the screen. "Oh, Major Loren just bought it."

"He better thank the Gods he gets to respawn in thirty seconds," Jewels added reaching over to steal some chips from the bag.

"Hey go to the mess and buy your own."

"Why when I can steal yours for free. And you'll let me."

"Okay fine," Miller protested handing her the open back. Jewels took three chips and then pushed the bag away. "So what, only two chips?"

"Well if your going to give up that easily...and besides, I took three," Jewels chuckled. "Ouch. Two of the nuggets just collided. Someone messed up that call."

"The next greatest generation," Miller said sarcastically.

"Greatest generation my ass. Especially if they keep running into each other. Hell, Cadet Peirceman just took out three of his own guys trying to pull of an axial slide manouver," Jewels pointed out.

"Ouch...although taking out three of your own guys takes talent," Miller joked.

"I don't call it talent," the XO's voice echoed in the room. "No, please don't get up, I was enjoying the play by play and color commentary. Better than watching a Pyramid game."

Jewels and Miller looked at each other. Neither one was too fond of the XO. He was a hard ass about all the wrong things.

"And while I'm here, I don't suppose you know where that miserable frak up you call a pilot Charmer is do you?" the XO asked.

"Probably off fraking some hot young cadet," Jewels sneered.

The XO stood over the pair and said nothing. He just stood there with an arrogant smirk on his face.

"Oh frak me," Miller sighed. The XO had caught Charmer in the act. "Which cell block?"

"Alpha," the XO smugly replied. "And he ain't getting out of hack this time. We just entered the Perennial Storm Cloud. Is old man ain't bailing his ass out this time for a while."

"And the Cadet," Jewels asked.

The XO glanced over, "She's lucky. I caught them just before he poked her. She'll be spending the next few weeks on KP. Well I'll leave the king and queen of frak ups to your business. Good day."

Major Grant walked out of the briefing room with a huge smile that left the instant he shut the door. He would not allow the rest of the crew to know just how much he enjoyed the last five minutes.

"Fraking Charmer," Jewels blasted.

"Yep," Miller said staring blankly ahead towards the screen, "Fraking Charmer all right."

"I really was the last one on the ship to know his Old Man is Nagala," Jewels blasted. Chapter 2

"Full colors, read and weep, this pile's mine," Vinny told the other apes sitting at the table. Their bosses were meeting in the other room. It was a quite retreat into the snow capped mountains on Aquaria where the Governor could meet in private with some of his big money supporters.

"Damn you Vinny, there goes my kid's education," Broady stammered flinging his cards against the table.

Vinny began counting his winnings as this was the last hand before their evening patrol. "They can join the fleet just like the rest of the kids from this miserable rock," Vinny said as he tallied over two hundred from this last hand alone.

"Boy's behaving over there," Gina said coming up from the buffet down below. Gina was tall, leggy, blonde, and wearing a bright red business suit with short skirt and dark stockings.

"Yes, Ma'am, getting ready to do our evening rounds. Not like any thing's going to be happening. This place is nicely tucked away up here," Broady told the Governor's personal secretary.

"One never knows," Gina offered before opening the large, heavy wooden door, and walking into the smoke filled room. The two Aquarian Civil Defense Troopers looked at the woman for a moment before shutting the doors behind Gina.

Vinny stood shaking his head, "Man, must be nice to have that on the side."

Broady argued, "Have you ever seen his wife? She could still be a model and she's fifty."

"Maybe we should go into politics and get all the pretty ladies," Vinny snickered grabbing his pistol from under his suit jacket and unlocking the trigger safety.

"That will be the day," Broady sighed.

"Ah, Gina, thanks for getting that thermos," Governor Maxell said.

Gina carefully sat the stainless steel container on the coffee table and sat back down on the sofa next to the Governor and put on her obsidian rimmed glasses. "Not a problem, Mister Governor."

"Greg, you can call me Greg here. Not like Joey here is going to tell my wife or anything," Maxell snorted pouring himself a fresh cup with and adding an alcoholic creamer. "Sure you don't want some of the good stuff?"

"No thank you, God does not approve of drunkenness," Gina answered pouring her own and stirring in the powdered creamer on the table.

"So it's a sin to drink, but not to frak," Maxell said sipping the hot liquid. "Which deity is this again? I mean really, some love child of Eunomia and Aphrodite?" The other men in the room had a good chuckle at the comment. It was clear Gina found the comment offensive, but had the good taste not to argue.

"Love child? They're both goddesses," Anatolia said. Anatolia was one of Andreas' many mistresses, but she was also his confident and most trusted advisor. She did not seem to mind him prancing around with other women in exchange for the power. This combination always intrigue Gina.

Andreas finished his glass of Ambrosia on the rocks and turned to Anatolia, "How do you know that dear? I mean really, Enema is a really obscure deity dear."

"Well father always wanted be to be a temple preisists," Anatolia answered pouring her lover another drink as well as refilling her own. "Guess all the studying is useful for useless knowledge. And the Goddess is Eunomia, not Enema, that's something we..."

"They don't need to know that," Andreas said placing his raised finger on her lips. The other looked coyly away at the comment. "So back to business."

"Business," Maxell raised his mug in toast. "We're facing an uphill battle this campaign. With Adar's minister of justice breathing down our neck, popular opinion is going to be a hard win this time."

"You've already won the election," Andreas countered, "The Unions will make sure of that."

"I know, I know," Maxell quickly snapped, "But doesn't do me a damn bit of good if I'm sitting in a prison ship like that crazy Sagittarian..Zak..Zrak...oh whatever the hell his name is."

"Zarek," Anatolia answered for the drunken Governor of the Colony.

"What are they going to charge you for?"

"I don't know, bribes, kickbacks, the usual corruption," Maxell admitted.

Andreas shook his head, "No, this is what we do. Next week you'll go around the planet and start making stump speeches about how the other Colonies oppressed us in the smaller colonies, turning us in to defacto slaves, an underclass to replace the cheap Cylon workers after the war!"

Anatolia shook her head, "Might have worked ten years ago, but now...no people are over that, but there was the incidents with the Marines and the riots last year. It was the Justice Ministry's recommendation to use the Marines."

"And Adar approved the plan. Having the Marines massacre Colonials has not been one of the more popular moves this administration has made," Andreas answered.

"Yet, the people still reelected him to a second term as President," Maxell said adding more cream liquor to his mug.

"His approval ratings are less than forty-five percent, last thing he wants is to start a war of words with one of the Colonial governors. Especially one that could run for President in the next election," Anatolia suggested. "Last thing he wants is you to have free air time on Caprica."

"No offense to my lovely Secretary here, but some of my past fraternizations could..."

"Who fraking cares?" Andreas shouted. "I mean Adar's fraking the Secretary of Education on the side."

"Really?" Maxell said surprised. "There goes the running as the values candidate last time around."

"Pandering to the fundamentalist Gemenonese," Andreas blasted. It was a common tactic of the Federalists.

"It did win him the election," Gina countered. She had been sitting and quietly observing the conversation as she felt a tingle down her spine. It was then she noticed Anatolia staring right into Gina's eyes. The feeling was dreadfully uncomfortable as the message had been received: Colonial Defenses compromised, Cylon Attack commencing. "We should head down to the cellar."

"Why?" Andreas asked jingling his glass for Anatolia to refill.

Gina searched her mind for a plausible answer, "They need to know what wine to serve tonight when your boss gets here."

Andreas and the Governor exchanged looks. It was something that had not crossed their minds, but a wonderful suggestion by the young woman. The heads of half the Unions and several of Governor Maxell's big money contributors were to arrive for a fund raising ball.

Maxell stood, a little wobbly, and shouted, "To the cellar to pick out the best wines for us...and the cheap stuff for the rest of the guest. Let's make it the most expensive cheap wine they've ever bought!"

Chapter 3

"Jump complete, we are now inside Nebula two-four-seven," Grant called out reading the status displays on the score box. It was slang for the dradis console that was fixed above the Command and Control Plotter in the middle of CIC. Unlike some battlestars, where the console could be retracted, these monitors were firmly welded to a series of reinforced metal tubing that resembled the score box at the Caprica Buccaneers' home pyramid courts.

"Dradis shows...well nothing really," Rhodes reported with his normal dry wit. "Trying best matrix filter...no contacts, but we only have a clear picture out to nine hundred, Sir."

"Very well," the Old Man said watching the random patches of green fuzz on the monochrome green monitors. "Secure from Action Stations, set condition two throughout the ship."

The XO grabbed his handset and dialed the 1MC. Major Barret Grant's voice echoed throughout the ship, "Attention, this is the XO. Secure from Action Stations, set Condition Two throughout the ship."

"Good work everyone," the Commander assured the crew, especially the young green members of the CIC staff. "Submit progress reports every six hours. I'll be in my quarters. XO has the Conn." Belu snapped around and marched out of CIC leaving Grant behind to take the XO's usual shift. The Commander would use the next four hours to try and catch up on paperwork.

The phone at Command and Control buzzed. Grant picked up the receiver, "XO."

"XO, CAG, request permission to begin flight ops," Miller's voice said over the line.

"You are clear to begin flight operations as soon as possible," the XO replied hanging up the hand set and turning to the operations posts behind him. Loudly he barked, "Prepare for flight operations, open the blast doors."

"Aye, sir," Lt. Rhodes answered. "Tubes nine through thirteen are hot, fighters away."

Grant looked up at the monochrome monitor and watched as hollow triangles with a lowercase 'v' in the centers resolved as contacts. After a few seconds, the triangles broke into two elements, a three ship and a two ship group to begin a standard CAP around the ship.

Mission Planning

"Major, take command of our birds," Captain Miller said to Loren from across the room.

Loren snarled at the young Captain, "Why? Your the CAG aren't you?"

"Yes, but this is a routine peace time CAP with experienced pilots," Miller dismissed.

"Experienced, three of the pilots out there are from my reservists. They haven't done any Mark One Eyeball stuff since last year," Major Loren warned. "And this is your training op."

"That is correct, but there are some other matters that need the CAG's attention," Miller protested.

"Like your insubordinate friend in hack?" the Major challenged. "A section thirty two, and we haven't been to space two days...he works quickly."

"Fine, Ensign Slate," Miller snarled focusing on Kelly in her flightsuit, which was a little loose on her. "You have the mission," Miller said handing her the wireless headset. "Take charge while I take care of some house cleaning." Miller glared at the Major as he handed off the headset to the junior pilot.

"Aye, sir," Slate answered awkwardly. She took the headset and quickly snapped it around her head careful not to get it tangled in her thick, dry, crispy auburn hair pulled back into a bun.

Miller then dashed out of the room leaving the Ensign and Major alone.

Slate just sighed and looked at her brother in law. It was a bit of a relief, it had been anyone other than family the situation would have been unbearable. "Don't look at me like that, I've been here just as long as you have," Slate snickered.

Miller continued speed walking down the hallway. As he rounded the corner he ran into Midshipmen David Miles. He was a very young kid with a thin face and plenty of teenage surface acne still pot-marking his face. "Midshipmen," the CAG nodded as the young man saluted.

"Sir, when do we start our actual time in the cockpit?" Miles asked.

Miller paused, "When you all can show me in the sims you can hit your marks a hundred percent of the time."

"A hundred percent, sir?"

"You deaf, Midshipmen?"

"No, Sir," Miles gulped.

"You heard me at the introduction briefing," Miller turned and began walked towards the brig, "I've sent too many letters to next of kin in my short career. Don't plan on sending anymore on my watch, kid."

The Midshipmen continued to follow the CAG, "I understand that Sir, but..."

"What?" Miller demanded.

"Permission..."

"Granted," Miller interjected.

"Why they hell is the Olympia a training ship given the fact that the landing strip is poorly designed?" the Midshipmen asked.

Miller stopped dead in his tracks. In four training cruises this kid was the first to ask a damn good question. One the CAG had not even thought about. Captain Miller stood still for a few moments to ponder a reply. "Normal landings, aren't that bad, even though they are hands on. It's the combat landings that are the killers," Miller rationalized. It was complete feldercalb, but the Midshipmen seemed to buy the answer.

"Makes sense I guess, Sir, but you said no auto landings?" Milles asked. "What the Old Man not..."

"No, Belu would be the first proponent of an auto landing system...if it worked. Turns out that the system was flawed on this ship. One in about three hundred landings attempts would be botched usually killing the pilot. Damned engineers spent two years trying to fix it, finally the Old Man pulled the plug. He figured if pilots were going to die landing, why not do it the old fashion way with human error," Miller commented with a hint of sarcasm in his voice.

"Thank you for answering my questions, Sir," the Midshipman snapped a salute and wondered back towards the pilot's quarters.

A few more corridors and the Captain arrived in front of the door to the Brig. Two Marines stood guard outside in full combat uniforms. Miller carefully opened the door to see Charmer sitting on the cot reading a small booklet of some kind.

The specialist manning the desk inside the brig stood at attention and offered the CAG a formal salute which Miller informally returned. "Please sign in, sir," the young man requested. Really it was an order...even if an unofficial one. Miller leaned over and signed his name as the specialist filled out the time-in blank.

"About time you came and visited me, I've only been in her for like six fraking hours. I think the Old Man made his point," Charmer said grabbing his things ready for a quick exit.

"Not this time," Miller shook his head. Miller stood his ground, dressing down his pilot just by his demeanor.

"Oh like you've never thought about it," Charmer blasted at the CAG.

"I am not even having that discussion," Miller said firmly. "What the hell were you thinking?"

"That, hey, there was a hot young blonde on board," Charmer unabashedly admitted. "Almost bagged her too."

"She's an twenty year old Academy Cadet," Miller scolded Charmer.

Charmer shook his head, "Oh so you turn your back on Lacy and that snipe and..."

"Enough," Miller cut the man off, "First off, yes, he is a captain, she's a J-G, but she's flight staff and he's a snipe. They are both single, and while it's clear that most of the crew don't like it, it's not against regs. Fraking a cadet is. That's the difference. Furthermore, what goes on between Frills and that grease monkey is up to the XO and Commander, not me."

"So you haven't talked with the Old Man yet then," Charmer snorted.

"No, and I don't plan on it either."

"So all..."

Miller again cut Charmer off much to Brackov's dismay, "You know, I've defended you the past two years, but this...it's the last straw. You've tried everything in the book to get your ass kicked out of the fleet without losing you education benefits...well you know what, I hope the XO rings your ass up on a section thirty-two."

The two men exchanged a brief glare before Captain Miller snapped around and faced the specialist sitting at the table. "Specialist," Miller began.

"Sir," the young man looked up.

"This man is not to have any books or writing materials, is that clear?" Miller ordered.

"Sir?" the young man questioned. "No books?"

"No books! That's criminal, that violates my rights!" Charmer yelled at the Captain.

"Right, no books. He's in hack...no need to reward him," Miller said taking one last look back as Charmer shaking his head before exiting the Brig.

Belu's Wardroom

Belu looked up at the tapping on his open door. "Figured you'd get here sooner or later Aten," Belu said addressing the CAG by his call sign. "Even if I let him out, on restricted duty, you actually think he could pass muster?" Miller just shook his head. Belu sternly finished, "Then let him sit there."

"Wasn't here to ask," Miller insisted. "You're right Sir, we've done as much as we could. There is a line there and Charmer finally broke it, but I have to ask...why is he in the Brig..."

"And the Cadet's not?" Belu finished the CAG's statement. "She's on KP duty the rest of the mission in addition to her normal shift. Everyone's entitled to one mistake. No reason to doom her career now. Especially not to following victim to Charmers...well charm."

Miller nodded, "Understood."

"You don't think it's fair," Belu said seeing the CAG did not approve of the measure.

"Frankly, sir, I don't know right now. I'm so ticked off at Charmer right now. Jewels and I were watching the real time download from the sims when the XO just walks in and..."

"He told me. He thinks you two are a little...too close for comfort, shall we say..."

"Me and Jewels," Miller said taken back.

Belu grinned, "I know, that was my reaction. Still it makes you wonder when you see a damn good pilot pass up two promotions to stay here."

"Two promotions?" Miller said shocked at the comment. "What promotions?"

"She was offered the chance to become a senior pilot on the Triton last year and the Pegasus this year," Belu told the CAG. "I don't suppose she said anything about it to you then."

Miller just shook his head disappointed. "No, she never said anything to me about it," Miller expressed with sadness in his voice. They had never really kept many secrets from each other over the years and this was big. He was shock she did not even bother to mention it for conversation on the future of her career.

"Well, I probably shouldn't have said anything then," Belu admitted, "Officer's discretion?"

"As always, sir," Miller nodded in understanding. They had at least one such meeting every week to discuss the health and happenings of the Air Group. "Although I do have to ask about Frills and the Greaser."

"I don't like it. It creates some chaos and confusion in the ranks, but technically...it's not against regulations so long as it doesn't become a problem. So far they've kept it private so..."

"I see," Miller said. "And if I went down on one of my pilots during a briefing..."

Belu dropped the pen in his hand and shot the CAG an odd look, "What?"

Miller smirked, "Just seeing if you were paying attention, Sir. I've got to get back to mission planning before Loren drives his sister-in-law insane."

Belu sat back and chuckled a bit, "Already heard about it." Belu waited for the CAG to exit the room before he snorted to himself for a moment before getting back to his paperwork. He could almost see Captain Miller and Lt. McMillian pulling some wise ass stunt as a joke. Belu would appreciate it, but he was not so sure about the XO.

Mission Planning

A taller, thin, attractive young woman entered mission planning in a flight suit with Raptor patch on the arm. Her light brown hair shined even in the pitiful interior lighting of the Battlestar Olympia.

"Can I help you, Lieutenant..." Slate offered.

The woman looked a little lost, "Sorry, I was looking for the CAG."

"Yeah, you would expect to find the Commander Air Group actually in mission planning overseeing, or dare I say, commanding an Air Group exercise," Loren blasted.

"Okay," the Raptor pilot blushed. She had heard there was bad blood between the CAG and some of the reservists, but not nearly this much. "I just needed to file our flight plan and data with the CAG."

"I can take that," Slate offered taking the sheet of paper with rounded corners. Ensign Kelly Kraikos carefully entered the numbers into the flight data terminal to schedule and approve the launch. "One Raptor or two?"

"Oh," the L-T said looking over Slate's shoulder, "I forgot to mark that, single ship. We're doing the routine comms check."

"Comms check?" Slate asked.

"Yeah, it's where the Old Man sends a Raptor out to download the communications traffic and bring back to Olympia since we're in the middle of all this frakking EMI," Loren told his sister-in-law. "Guess the CAG didn't tell you that we have to make trip out every six hours."

"Okay, will you knock it off about the CAG already Vern," Slate yelled. "I mean, really, how well do you like sleeping on the couch, because that can be arranged."

The Lt. just looked at the two completely shocked and speechless.

Slate shrugged, "He's my brother-in-law."

"Brother-in-law, Sir," Loren corrected.

"Hey, did I ask you," Slate snapped.

"No, but she is a Lieutenant, Ensign," Loren retorted.

"Sorry," Slated sighed to the Lt. "I'm Ensign Kelly Kraikos, one of the new instructors. Although in sixteen days and change it will be Lt. Junior Grade..."

"Oooo, Junior Grade," Loren openly mocked.

Slate turned to Major Vern "Stubby" Loren and shouted, "Hey I hope you like that couch Stubby!"

"Stubby?" The Raptor pilot grinned.

Loren held up is short, thick, stubby fingers, "Try mashing flight controls with these...it takes talent."

"Not what from what my sister says!" Slate replied.

"Wow...you just going to stand there and take that, Major?" the Lt. egged them on. She was really starting to enjoy witnessing this exchange. It would make for good scuttlebutt at the next Raptor-only triad game.

"Hey, I like this, L-T..."

"Lt. Junior Grade Lacy Namos, aka Frills," the Raptor Pilot finally introduced her self. "I'm the new Rook raptor pilot, but I spent four years as an ECO before actually getting into flight school."

"Four years? I thought the fleet needed every pilot they could find," Slate said recalling how the surgeon falsified her height.

"Bad eyes," Frills admitted, "Took that long to get the new corrective surgery. Now they are better than perfect."

"Oh wait another fifteen years, that changes," Loren told her. "Turn forty and everything is down hill from there."

Slate placed her hand over her mouth and whispered at Frills, "Especially the erections."

"Oh Frack you, I heard that!" Loren said gritting his teeth.

"Woah, woah, woah, what the hell is going on in here!" Jewels said walking in from the hanger deck. "I know I've been on a two hour CAP, but damn, that's too much information for me. Where's Miller."

"Right here," Miller said walking back into Mission Planning, "I miss anything."

"Not really," Slate said deadpan as Frills giggled a little and Jewels gave Miller a strange look. "Every thing's gone according to plan, Blue squad just launched port and the last of Red Squad is being recovered starboard aft."

"Good," Miller nodded, "Something I could help you with Frills?"

"Nah, just filed the standard coms check flight plan. Slate here took care of it," Frills admitted with a yawn.

"The sex really that good," Jewels offered deadpan.

"I think she better head to the doc then, she's been affected by snipes," Miller added.

"You mean, infected..." Slate corrected.

"Whatever," Miller shrugged. "After all you know what they say about snipes and the bowls of the ship." Everyone looked around at each other shaking their heads. "Actually I was hoping someone had, because I really don't know the punch line to that one."

"It's been lovely, but I got preflight in ten," Frills said looking at her watch.

Slate took off the headset and handed back to the CAG, "Yeah and I need to...clean my rack."

"And I have a briefing in five," Loren stated heading for the exit.

Miller looked a Jewels. "What?" Jewels said pulling out her pony tail holder an letting down her wavy copper hair. "Don't look at me like that, I'm hitting the showers and then getting some rack time." The others had left the room as the CAG continued to stare at Lt. McMillian. "What?" she barked.

Miller continued looking at her and shook his head slightly, "Nothing."

"I know that smirk," Jewels offered with sigh. "So what did you and the Old Man talk about with Charmer?"

"Since he isn't going to make grade," Miller shook his head heavily, "We're going to let him cool his heels a bit in the brig."

Jewels looked up to see the live close circuit feed of the landing bays on the two monitors behind the CAG. Her eyes grew larger by the second.

"What?" Miller demanded.

"He's not going to make it," she said in a dry, dead, voice before looking away as the Viper slammed into the deck.

Miller turned around just in time to see the landing skids collapse from too hard of a landing and a Mark Seven go sliding down the starboard landing bay and ignite into flames. "Oh frak," whispered with his jaw hanging open in horror. An instant later the Alert Klaxon's began blaring with reports of a fire on the starboard flight deck.

Medical Bay

"Report," Belu barked as he entered to see several wounded.

"Not now," the Doctor, a young man just out of Medical School insisted as he dashed to another bed and closed the curtain behind him.

Belu caught Chief Jessika Wilson hovering over two of her crew members holding oxygen masks to their soot covered faces. "Chief?" the Commander growled.

Wilson turned around and gave a weak salute, "One viper lost, six of my DC team were injured trying to get to the pilot and put out the flames when ammo pod two ignited."

"The pilot?" Belu asked. Wilson nodded looking at where the Doctor had just entered and then slowly shook her head. "Where's Miller?"

"He was here about two minutes ago. Long enough for the Doctor to yell at him to get the hell out of the way and that he'd let Miller know who he could write letters too," Wilson said. "New Doc's got one hell of a bed side manner, sir."

"I noticed..." Belu sighed looking down at the three men and two women still in fire fighting gear. "How bad is the flight deck?"

"The incident report team are doing their work. There apparently wasn't any structural damage, just some surface scoring. So we should be back up and running in the next thirty hours or so," Wilson informed the Commander.

"Good. I'll the Captain schedule the memorial," the Commander said.

"He's already on it," Wilson stated. "We've started this one off real well, Sir."

"Not the first time we've lost a man. Was it a Cadet..."

"Reservists sir. Apparently he missing the angle of attack and came in too steep and the skids collapse. Sparks flew everywhere and started a fire in the number two engine," Wilson offered. "I've seen the tapes. Don't need the incident report for that."

"And the viper?"

"Burned up pretty good. Not much to salvage out of it, but we'll do the best we can before spacing the hulk, sir," Wilson insisted. "I know how the Admiral is about our spare parts budget."

The next morning

It was the third time Miller had replayed the botch landing from the previous day before he had Jewels finally pull the plug on the projector and bring back up the lights. "Let's go over this again, because apparently some of you were too busy fraking off up there instead of taking notes. The angle of attack on a landing for the Olympia is two degrees, not five."

One of the Midshipmen Pilot Cadet raised his hand. Miller recognized it as the young man that had questioned him earlier.

"Midshipmen," the CAG called on the young man.

"Junior Cadet, Miles requesting..."

"Just say it," Miller insisted. "We don't have all day."

"Sir, you said the angle of attack was less than two degrees for combat landings, you never addressed regular hands on approaches during the intro," Miles corrected the CAG. The room was full whispers after than as Miller turned to Slate, who was standing just behind him.

Miller whispered quietly in to Slate's ear, "I thought we covered this?"

"Juliana did in her preflight as have I before taking out any Cadets, plus everyone had three days in the sims before going out there. They should have known," Slate whispered back.

Miller stood up tall at the podium and answered, "Landing procedures have been covered time and again in pre-flights and during your simulator time."

The pressure hatch at the back of the room swung open as the Old Man walked in to the briefing room. "Commander on Deck."

"As you were," Belu shouted before the pilots even had a chance to stand up. "Captain, may I..." Miller nodded and stepped away from the podium clearing it for the Commander. Belu cleared his throat briefly before pulling out and reading a statement, "I have the preliminary incident report from the Sergeant at Arms and it is as follows: the crash was a result of pilot error. Captain Bonderman made the landing after two previous wave offs and ignored a third from the LSO. Captain Bonderman died at Zero-Three-fifteen this morning from injures suffered. A memorial will be held at eighteen hundred this evening on hanger deck five. Uniform will be dress grays. That is all."

Belu quietly returned the podium to the CAG and walked out of the room just as Miller began to chew into the pilots good for not listening to instructions. It was a marked change from Miller's normal everyday demeanor, but Belu had seen the CAG get mean before after such incidents.

Belu's Wardroom

Belu had just poured himself about two shots worth of Ambrosia on the rocks for both him and his XO. "I think Miller's being a little harsh on the pilots after yesterday."

"Miller...harsh? Please," Major Grant voiced his frustration. "If he had actually been in mission planning, he would have known that Bonderman was having issues with his landing approaches. Did you even read the final report?"

"No," Belu admitted.

"I think you should. It cited twenty different things that went wrong including the CAG not manning his station. Instead he was visiting that frak up in the brig," Grant said taking a sip of Ambrosia.

"It's not his fault," Belu told the XO.

"Well apparently he gave the landing approach angles for a combat landing during his initial briefing, not for a standard, hands on approach," Grant blasted.

"They covered it in the pre-flights," Belu responded.

Grant shook his head, "Not all of them. Slate did, Jewels...well half said she did, the other half said she didn't, and Miller...apparently he didn't say much of anything. You really should think about putting Major Loren in charge, after all he is senior pilot."

"Senior citizen, maybe, but no...he's not as good as Aten."

"I can't see how he can be much worse," Grant said taking another drink. This was his third since leaving watch. The other two had been with Major Loren discussing the problem of the CAG. "I mean he lets his pilots frak cadets, snipes, and apparently anything else with a hole or a poker."

"Enough," Belu snapped. "I know you two have had your differences in the past, but Miller's job is to train pilots. Given his success rate, it's hard to argue with methods. Ninety-seven percent..."

"...Of Pilots training under Miller go on to have above average or excellent marks," Grant finished the speech he had heard dozens of times before. "Still doesn't mean he's the right man for the job and you know what I mean. Flight instructor...I'll give you that, but he's a lousy CAG. Lieutenant McMillian is the one that keeps the show running...she's your real CAG."

"She doesn't want the job," Belu suggested taking a sip of his drink. "Else she would have accepted the job on the Triton."

"Triton?" the XO barked. "Oh yeah, last year."

"She was offered a position on Pegasus this year," Belu told the XO.

"Cain...hell of an Admiral," Grant commented.

"You really think so?" Belu questioned.

Grant nodded, "If I ever got in a fight, I know who I'd want on my side."

Chapter 4

The guests were arriving as the limos and fancy cars stretched down the side of the mountain. Each guest paying 1000 cubits each just to get in the door and another 500 if they wanted the sit down dinner. Campaigning was a never ending job for the governor. He had exactly two weeks off after the swearing in ceremony before having to start the cycle all over again.

"Good evening Beth," Maxell greeted the wife of his long time friend and now transportation minister. "Hope the travel up here wasn't too bad."

"No," Beth answered as a steward dressed in white with a red vest took her coat to the check in. "The weather was good today, nice an sunny. Will Nancy be here tonight?"

"Unfortunately not," Maxell said with fake sympathy, "She is back at the Capital for the dedication of a new school library in her honor."

"Well," Beth slyly began, "I know how she is about politicking. Always wondering when you'll finally get sick of it."

"Well I can only serve one more term as governor," Maxell assured her.

"But then what? About time for a presidential run...at least that's the rumor going around," Beth said.

"I have to get reelected first," Maxell smiled before going on to the next guest.

Anatolia was hovering over by the appetizer buffet filled with fresh fruits, nuts, cheese, and a full open wine bar. She was having a glass of her favorite blush from Caprica. It was light and sweet to the palette: the perfect complement to the four cheese cubes on her plate. "Ahhh, spicy," she said fanning her mouth.

Andreas walked up, "Warm enough for you?"

"Watch out for that white cheese with the flecks in it...it's spicy," Anatolia warned.

"I love spicy," Andreas said reaching for the cheese cubes.

Anatolia smacked his hand, "Yeah, but spice doesn't like your stomach and I'm don't baby you. You want to be babied, go home to your wife."

"And the five kids..." Andreas shook his head.

"We need to get down to the cellar and pick out those wines for the top contributors before more people arrive," Gina said to the pair. Gina had changed into a simple, elegant, black strapless dress with high slits on both sides.

"Not in the mood for red?" Andreas snapped.

"We need to do it now," Gina said urgently.

Andreas snuck a cheese cube when Anatolia was busy staring out the panoramic window on the valleys below. "Wow, that's odd," Anatolia said seeing the billowing orange glow rising from behind the next mountain range. "I've never seen anything like that, Andreas, look."

"Just a moment," Andreas said trying to finish the cube before turning around.

"We need to get the Governor and go now," Gina tugged at Andreas' suit jacket.

"Why such a rush?" Andreas said.

"Wow, there's another one," Anatolia said, "Andreas, you have too look at these. They're beautiful."

Andreas turned around and coyly asked, somewhat annoyed, "Look at what?"

"Those," Anatolia pointed out to the three...now four rising plums of firey destruction. The color instantly drained from Andreas' face. "What is it?" she asked as her lover gulped.

"We," Andreas tried talking but only a squeak came out as he grabbed Anatolia hard by wrist. "We've got to get to the cellar, now."

"Why, it's such a pretty light show."

"Broady, Vinny get Maxell and get to the shelter, now!" Andreas yelled over the sound of the crowd as he began to run.

Before Maxell could react, the two body guards lifted Maxell from the ground and carried him down the stairs with Andreas, Anatolia, and Gina quickly following. From his vantage, Maxell saw the plums for the first time. Atomic fireballs in the distant. Just as they reached the cellar a bright light blinded him.

More people began to run in panic into the cellar and then into another cellar, an old fallout shelter, that led deep into the mountain. The resort had been designed as a fallout shelter during the Colonial Wars and could fit all the party guests with enough food, water, and supplies for months.

"I can't see!" Maxell squirmed. "What the hell just happened?"

"Don't know," Andreas said as they passed into a large set of steel doors. "But they look like nuclear detonations, sir. Looks like they hit the space ports and the Capitol from what I saw."

"But I can't see."

"Flash blindness, if your lucky, it will return in a few minutes," Gina said. "Now keep moving into the mountain. I hope this place has anti-radiation meds."

"It should. We keep this place operational in the budget just in case," Andreas assured her. "Along with food, water, and a short range FTL capable shuttle."

"Those were nuclear bombs?" Anatolia asked having only seen old archival films of small scale detonations. "Who would be attacking us? The President? Has he gone off his rocker?"

"No," Andreas snapped, "Even Adar isn't that stupid."

"Terrorists, some of the Workers party must have gotten their hands on a nuke!" Maxell growled.

"One, maybe, seven..." Andreas offered.

"Then who else could it be?"

Gina stood there as they entered the inner most shelter and shut the door protecting them from the rest of the population trying to scramble to the fall out shelter.

"I don't know," Andreas admitted. "I don't know who could have pulled this off."

Gina looked past the group and said coldly, "Humanity's Children have returned."

Chapter 5

"Galactica is being decommissioned today," Major Grant, the XO reminded the Old Man. "It's a wonder the Fleet hasn't scrapped this relic." Major Barret Grant was one of the taller crewmembers with hint of a growing potbelly as he quietly slipped into his early thirties. His sandy brown hair was always neatly parted to the left and the sides shaved close and tapered in the back. The Air Crew had given him the nickname, "Babyface" thanks to his boyish plump cheeks, but there was nothing boyish about his command style. He was a product of ROTC and OCS with the goal of some day commanding a Battlestar himself.

The Major and Old man walked down the aging corridors of the Battlestar Olympia. One of four of the Midway class, Olympia was among the oldest battlestars left in service. Her two sister ships were mothballed years ago and the others lost during the Cylon War.

"The mothballs seem to provide an endless supply of spare parts for Olympia. Keeps repair costs down," The Old Man remarked. It was the only thing that kept her functioning in the Colonial fleet since most of her major parts now out of production.

"So is that why the Dradis screens are all monochrome?" Grant blasted.

The Old Man sighed, "No it's because ten years ago she was supposed to undergo a major overhual. Instead, the funding was directed elsewhere by the Admiral and we were placed into the reserves. So we had to make due with the existing systems and the left over scraps."

"Hell of a learning experience for the rook engineers," Grant smirked. "Although, with all due respect, Markov is a lousy engineer."

"Nothing ever is positive from you, is it?" Belu remarked.

"It's not the XO's job to be positive," Grant uttered. "And he's, what, two years behind on some major upgrades."

"Still, not his fault when the Fleet won't give you the parts and diverts the money to other projects," Belu hissed about the politics.

Grant grumbled, "Then where the hell did all this money go?"

"That's a good question," Belu replied. He stopped just before they entered CIC, "Probably some Admiral's private bank account somewhere."

The XO repeated the same story every time they launched on a mission. He would remark on how Olympia's guns and flight decks remained in remarkably good shape, but all the small things were wrong. Constant problems with pipes rupturing and toilets backing up for no apparent reason, console switches sticking, hinges creaking, valves rusted shut, and the list went on. All these little problems made it the ideal training vessels for the raw tech school grades and ROTC cadets to learn first hand how fun serving on a Battlestar was in their parent's generation.

"I'm sure she's not too far behind Galactica," Belu reluctantly admitted opening the door to CIC. "Hell the real reason they are retiring Galactica is Adama...but so long as there is a Battlestar named Galactica, Adama's not going anywhere."

"What's so bad about Adama...pretty good Commander from what I've heard," Grant said.

"Nothing against the man personally, his own damned stubbornness is ending his career. If he'd let them put in new networked computers...she'd probably have another couple decades left in her. The lack of networked computers easily cuts Galactica's effectiveness rating in half," the Belu griped. He knew Adama mostly through reputation. He had met the man only a hand full of times, but had developed a subtle dislike of him dating back at least twenty years. Belu had earned his command, not married into it like Adama.

"So what's our effectiveness rating then?" the XO quipped.

It brought a grin to the Old Man's face, "Pretty sure it's the negative column."

"They send the snipe bait here just to watch their eyes bug out at having to move rusty valves by hand instead of standing at a computer and having a machine do it," the XO snickered.

"How's the flight training?" the Old man asked changing the topic. He could poke fun at the ship, but hearing Major Grant's constant picking on her got old and fast.

"Continuing despite the accident," the XO grumbled. "Putting vets and young kids out here doesn't seem like an ideal situation. Why even bother?"

"Because, the Cylons and the EMI don't get along," the Old Man answered. "Best place to engage them if we ever have too. Also, the storm plays havoc with dradis and communications. The pilots, gunners, future watch officers, and all the rest need to learn how to operate in these conditions."

"That's if we ever hear from the Cylons again. Forty years and nothing," the XO grunted just before they began their duty shifts. The Old Man was looking over the Midwatch reports. It was his routine to spend a half hour in CIC first thing in the morning and then make his daily rounds before taking command of second shift. The XO was in charge until then. "They just blow off the yearly meeting at Armistice every year."

"Speaking of which, isn't that today?" the Commander asked.

"Actually yesterday," the XO replied.

"Oh," the Old Man offered dryly while flipping to the next page.

Mostly young kids manned the Combat Information Center, especially during Midwatch, with a few experienced NCO's looked over their shoulders to keep frack ups to a minimum. The point was for the kids to make the frack ups here, not on their duty vessels later. Green officers would often recite regulations, proud they had memorized the book in OCS. It was their way of making up for the lack of real experience. The smart ones found themselves a salty old Chief and listened to every one of his words as if they were written in the Scrolls of Kobol. However, most of the young officers were too proud of their rank to listen to a knuckle dragger no matter what the difference of experience.

Teaching these Officers the rules of space was part of the Olympia's mission. This was one of only two patrols the ship would make this year as part of Battlestar Group Twenty-three. Although, the term Group no longer applied as the half dozen support ships no longer accompanied the aged ship.

Captain Miller was chatting with the Senior Watch Officer, the younger brother of an old friend from childhood. Both were Fleet Brats, smiling and laughing as the Old Man and XO read over the reports from Mid Watch.

"Sit rep," the Old Man turned back towards the CAG and Senior Watch Officer.

The CAG stood to attention, "We're continuing with training ops. We have sixteen sorties planned for the day including two live fire exercises with decoy drones."

"Teaching the nuggets how to use the ole Mark One Eye Balls," the XO quipped.

"Be aware, I'm planning a ship wide drill for fourteen hundred," the skipper told the CAG.

"We will have the standard CAP out at that time," Captain Miller said after consulting the flight schedule. "Want me to change it?"

"No," the skipper replied immediately taking a moment to pause and think how he would restructure the exercises. "And don't spread the word."

"It's probably scuttlebutt already," Major Grant commented.

"Very well," the Old Man nodded. "Anything else?"

The CAG stood there and held his breathe for a moment and then spoke up, "There was one incident."

"What?" The XO expressed with a bit of angst.

"One of our patrol Vipers suffered some sort of glitch that caused the computers to shutdown," Miller said.

"Yesterday one of your pilots pulls a frak and gets himself and two others killed and now this!" the XO scolded the CAG. The CIC went dead silent as the XO continued, "Your fraking lucky your not sitting in the brig on charges of dereliction."

"Major," the Old Man quietly tried to calm the XO down.

"Isn't he supposed to wake us if something goes wrong during a flight op?" The Major turned and questioned the Commander.

Miller gulped, "We dispatched a SAR Raptor and was able to recover both pilot and the craft."

"Still," the XO cut off the CAG, "We should have been notified." The XO took a few steps towards the Captain and growled, "One more frak up from..."

"Major!," the Skipper sharply warned. The Commander turned to the CAG and sternly continued, "For future reference, the XO is to be notified if anything goes wrong, is that understood, Captain!"

"Aye, sir," Captain Miller nodded to the Old Man.

The Old Man calmed down and looked at both the men and added, "Vipers are mechanical beasts, they do break down. So long as we didn't loose anyone,."

"Anything else gentlemen?" Commander Belu asked. The XO and CAG shook their heads. "Good, that will be all, gentlemen." The Commander stood there for a few moments looking over the communications traffic logs. They sent a Raptor outside the gas cloud every eight hours to download anything important from the communications network. "The Armistice officer is late reporting. There is a request here for all FTL capable craft to report in," the Commander read aloud.

"Shouldn't we dispatch a Raptor? After all we're probably the closest ship all way the hell out here. I mean we are on the edge of the Red Line," the XO said with a hint of bitterness in his voice. The EMI storm was a permanent fixture hanging on the edge of the Twelve Colonies.

This did not escape the ears of the Commander. He continued to read over the reports. The Major stood there, tense, waiting for a reply. "The next standard comm.. operation is in an hour. It can wait that long," the Commander finally answered. Belu turned to his XO and asked without looking up, "What's on your mind?"

"Sir?" the XO questioned.

"Your standing there with a rod up your ass again. Speak...," the Commander said.

A few of the young kids overhead the conversation and tried looking up trying not to be noticed. Major Grant looked around to see if anyone was focusing on them and walked closer to the Commander.

"Why do you let him do that?" Major Grant protested.

"Who do what?" the Commander asked for clarification.

"Miller. He fails to report a SAR mission and you don't say anything, other than don't do it again?" The XO blasted. "Hell he's CAG for fack's sake. A man like that should damn well know better than to leave flight ops when he has rusty vets out there trying to land. He should know if a Viper goes missing, he should contact us."

The Commander looked up into the Major's eyes and set down the reports on the plotter. "He knows what he's doing, Major. If it was a serious problem, he would have contacted us," the Commander told the XO. "Now I'm going to give you some advice your not going like: lighten up Major. Command is an art, and part of that art is knowing what rules to enforce and when."

"And who decides that? We have rules for a reason, Commander," the XO muttered softly not to draw the attention of the surrounding crew. "If the rules aren't followed, people die."

"Follow the rules and people die," the Old Man grumbled softly. "People die in our business. It's something you have to accept and move on. The only thing you might have control over is who and how many."

Chapter 6

"Lighting must not have been a big concern when they built this ship," Captain Miller said while puffing. He was doing his daily jog with the other flight instructors. It was a good way to relieve stress, keep their PT scores up, and talk about the cadets behind their backs.

Jewels was still in slightly better shape than the CAG, but she was now beginning to feel the burn in her calves from their second lap. At least Olympia was a fair amount shorter than the Pacifica. She had served two tours aboard that ship. Pacifica had been one of the original twelve and was just retired. She had gone to the decommissioning ceremony and sat in the small crowd listening to the old timers tell war stories.

"I don't think they really cared much back then. Things were going badly for humanity when this ship was built. They rushed production without thinking about some of the finer parts of the design," Lt. Julia McMillan snorted between puffs of breathe.

"That would explain a lot," Major Loren added.

"Still moaning about the ship's design?" Miller mocked.

Loren had to wait a few steps to catch enough breath to respond, "Well they called these Midway classes because they were Mid Way between a battleship and a real battlestar. Ended up with a ship that can't do either role worth a damn."

"Hey, any of you catch that Pyramid game on Gemenon?" Miller asked changing the subject. He knew all about the history of the ship.

"No," Jewels said. "Heard it was quite the game though."

"I saw it," Miller admitted, "One of the best I've seen in a couple years. Although, that call the refs made…totally wrong."

"Yeah, they were pretty blind on that one. Not the ref's fault, he was caught out of position to see it," Stubby said defending the ref, however Gemenon was far from his favorite team.

"And you wouldn't be saying that because you're a Bucks fan, would you?" Jewels playfully sniped.

"Either run or get out of the way!" a sharp high pitched voice said from behind. "This is what…the second time I've lapped ya today?" Slate mocked her superiors. She slowed up and turning around and began jogging backwards just add a little twinge with the knife in the gut. She was younger and had more energy than most the air crew combined.

"Like to see how your joints work in another ten years, Ensign," Stubby snickered at Ensign Kraikos.

"Well," the Ensign said in her nasally voice, "Can't wait on you, got keep ahead of the heard." The sounds of dozens of shoes hitting the deck began to echo down the corridor as the pack of cadets were close behind. "Make a hole!"

"Enjoy that energy while you can!" Miller yelled. Miller waited for the spitfire to get a few sections ahead and round the next corner before turning to the others, "How did she get the call sign Slate anyway?"

"You know, I have no idea," Jewels admitted.

"Don't look at me," Stubby answered. "Seems like fireball, or Red Streak, or Runt would have been a better callsign."

"Runt?" Jewels chuckled. "Oh I could see where that would really..."

"Piss her off," Loren jumped in, "Oh, yeah, that's what my wife calls her: Runt. She hates it with a passion. Once she died her red...okay it came out orange, but then the Mrs. began calling her the Red Runt...oh that's was a hell of a Colonial Day."

"Race to the end, go!" the CAG shouted as they had their last straight away free and clear for a foot race.

Jewel's long skinny legs helped her edge out the CAG by a half step as Stubby took up the rear. The three stood there taking deep breathes, all three bent trying to summoned the energy to make it to the head, shower up, and then begin their watches on the flight deck.



Chapter 7

Captain Miller returned to his quarters and changed into his flight suit. His first flight of the day was scheduled in ninety minutes. He would launch as part of a two-ship element to observe the nuggets making practice gun runs on decoys launched from three pre-positioned Raptors. After a quick apple from the pilot's mess, he headed for the hanger deck.

"Good morning Chief," Miller said taking the clipboard with the preflight checklist. He looked over his Viper Mark Seven and made sure everything appeared in order before signing off for the Chief's records. He handed the signed paper and clipboard back to the Chief.

"Thank you, sir," Chief Petty Officer Jessika Wilson nodded. Jessika was about the same age as the CAG, in her mid thirties. The petite, curvy spitfire had over a dozen years in the service. During her time, she had earned a solid reputation as not only a tech, but as a teacher and mentor to the kids. Half of her deckhands were fresh from the fleet tech school or engineering cadets from War College. The other half of the crew was comprised of reservists.

It took a special people to deal with the all the little fracks ups around. People with infinite patients were needed to turn this raw material into refined officers and enlisted men. Despite the continually green crew, Olympia's flight deck had the sixth lowest accident rate in the fleet. This was something the Chief prided herself on and the Old Man respected her efforts.

Miller climbed into the cockpit and began to strap in, "Any chance to look at that Viper that was hauled in?"

"Only about five minutes, sir. I have the students checking it out. They're having fun trying to solve the mystery. All I can tell you right now is that it's fraked up," Jessika replied helping the Captain strap into the seat. It was her job to make sure he was snug in the safety harness.

"So, what fraked it up?" the Captain asked with a sardonic grin.

Jessika took her time. Her focus at that moment was to make sure he was secure in the seat and the life support hoses connected and functioning. She would hear the hiss of oxygen escaping through the uncoupled neckpiece confirming air was reaching the suit. Only then did she reply, "The fighter's computers just shutdown."

"Just shutdown?" Miller inquired further. He popped his neck before coupling the helmet to the rest of the flight suit. It was his ritual before lifting off.

"That's not good for your neck," the Chief warned in their usual game.

Miller took the helmet and grinned, "Maybe not, but it feels soooo good."

"To answer your question…I don't know why. The cadets are having a hell of a time getting the thing to boot so we can download the logs," she answered. "Flickers to life for about three seconds, then dies. It has to be a hardware problem; you know a bad power relay or something like that. Don't worry, sir, we'll have it back up and running before this afternoon's event."

"Event?" Miller said coyly. "What event?"

"The battle drill the Old Man is planning," the Chief replied.

Miller gave her an odd look, "He told you?"

"Hell no," Jessica replied, "You can't keep a secret on a Battlestar. Thought you knew that, Captain."

"True," the CAG said putting a piece of tape over his ear to secure the ear bud. "Still, you know, we have six reserve Vipers,"

"Aye sir, and four of them are Mark Twos that's been sitting in storage longer than I've been in the fleet," she smirked.

"Mark twos…wow. I though they were all in museums or rusting in scrap heaps," Miller said fastening his helmet. He gave the thumbs up as the Chief tapped his helmet twice before sliding down the ladder and detaching it from the hitch points.

The tractor and deck crew came along and wheeled the fighter to it's assigned launch tube for launch as Captain Miller made his final pre-launch preps including contacting launch control.

"Look like me and you, cap," a familiar voice said into his right ear.

Miller looked over his right shoulder. It was Charmer in the next launch tube already in position. "Does the XO know your out of hack?"

"Nope, deal the Old Man cut with me. Apparently I get out to fly once a day and that's it.," Charmer answered. "Works for me. So just a simple observation run, Captain?"

"Pretty much. There's about twenty nuggets with live ammo, so watch out," Miller warned Charmer adding under his breath, "You never know where they're going to shoot."

"Copy that," Charmer replied sarcastically.

The vipers shot out of the launch tubes. Miller silently counted to three before touching the stick and waiting for Charmer to form up on his wing. The nuggets had launched twenty minutes earlier and flying in formation with their instructors.

"Rex Two-three reports in position, ready to launch training birds," a call from flight control came over the wireless.

"Copy that, this is Blue leader, we're ready when you are," the Ensign Slate replied.

Millard copied, "This is Observer One-one, hold five until we're in position."

"Roger that Observer One, we'll wait for your signal," Rex leader announced.

Miller cut his throttle and spun around to hold relatively still position with the training area. Charmer stayed on his wing in formation and waited. "This is Observer one, you are go for launch Rex Two," Miller said.

He watched as several decoy drones were launched on various vectors. Ensign Slate and the Control Raptor issued a hail of intercept calls and orders as the six vipers broke into their elements to chase after the drones. With in seconds they were requesting weapons free and firing off red bursts of kinetic energy projectiles.

"They have any idea what ammo costs for these things?" Charmer mocked the nugget's accuracy.

"Like you should be talking," Miller replied smugly. Charmer was not noted as being the best shot in the squadron, either in or out of the cockpit.

"Come on, Aten, I'm not that bad," Charmer insisted.

"Your scorecard says otherwise," the CAG warned his wingman.

Hanger Deck

Jessica walked over to the downed vipers, wiping the grease off her hands with a blue shop towel. The Cadets were bitching at each other as the voices of the pilots played over the 1MC. The Chief had not made any friends with the Cadets today. They were not happy at the Chief for waking them at zero three hundred, four hours before their normal reveali,

"So what you all discovered?" the Chief said with her hands neatly tucked behind her back. Deep down, she enjoyed seeing these cadets suffer a little before they became officers. In just a few months, she would be addressing these people as Sirs, but right now, she could pull rank and she was not going to miss that chance.

"The fraking thing won't boot, Chief," one of the young Cadets said. He was only twenty, a third year midshipman from the Academy.

"And your major?" the Chief asked.

"Software engineering, Chief," the kid answered.

Jessica stood there leaning back and crossing her arms. "You're a third year software engineering major, and you can't tell me what's going on with this fighter?"

"Something fraking scrambled the software," the Kid said defensively.

"Scrambled the software?" the Chief dismissed. "Not everything is software related, Cadet. If a Viper looses power like this, it's usually due to a phantom in the electrical grid."

"I already checked the diagnostics computers. They all check out green," a young girl's voice said from within the nose of the fighter.

The Chief knelt to see the small open panel the young girl and managed to wiggle into. Must be nice to still be a size one or less the Chief thought as she had begun to pack on a few extra pounds recently.

"And who are you?" the Chief demanded.

"Janna Richardson," the soft feminine voice said. The woman slowly wiggled her way out of the node of the viper. The bronze skinned, dark hair, tall, twiggy young woman finally stood up. She was smacking on some strawberry flavored chewing gum.

The Chief stood back and found her self looking up at the Cadet. Jessika stood stiff. One of the other cadets nudged the girl and whispered about saluting.

"Oh," Richardson gasped. She instantly gave a salute, "Second year electrical engineering cadet Janna Richardson."

"Carry on," the Chief said in a normal voice. "Report."

"Well, I checked all the foreword and aft relays and circuits. Nothing's tripped and the on board diagnostics from the black boxes showed everything was fine. In fact the black box recorder showed that the power system shut down because of a command. It wasn't a ground fault," the Cadet told the Chief.

"Are you sure that there wasn't some power relay with a bad fuse or…"

"No, Sir," Richardson cut off the chief. "I double checked everything."

Jessica stood there unsure whether to believe the cadet. Ten years of being a mechanic and three years working with the new Mark Sevens had taught her many lessons. She had seen vipers power down before, but always due to some kind of hardware problem.

"Nikki," the Chief called out. Nikki Anderson was one of the Chief's most trusted techs. Her small petite frame also made her ideal for jobs like this.

This curvaceous, sociable woman has wiry blue-black hair, green eyes and a snub nose. "Ya, Chief?"

"Get in the nose, see if there's something wrong with the electrical system," the Chief ordered. "I'm going to check these relays back here."

"Right, Chief," Petty Officer Anderson answered. "Let me get some gloves, a circuit checker, and a head lamp."

"Fair enough," Jessica answered as she looked over the disorganized table for the tools she would need to check the aft relays.

Suddenly the Viper began to tremble catching everyone's a attention. The Chief turned around to see the flaps and rudder swinging wildly. "Who's the one fraking around in the cockpit!" Jessica yelled. The Chief walked over to the side as everyone took a step or two back from the craft. The Cockpit canopy was slide open. No one was there.

The firing pins in the three guns began clicking as their chambers were empty. Now even the Chief stepped back as the RCS thrusters kicked in for a brief moment jerking the fighter back into the bulkhead.

"Now do you believe me?" Richardson snapped with a slight hiss in her voice.

The Chief shot the Cadet a look as the Deck Alert Klaxon blared. "Who emptied the ammo reserves?"

"I did," one of the other Cadets stepped foreword. "I thought it was a good idea to remove the ammo and drain the fuel tanks. Much safer to work around an unarmed, unfueled Viper."

"Standard repair protocol," the Chief muttered as the Viper Continued flapping its control surfaces wildly. "Good job Cadet."

"Thank you, Chief," he said snapping to attention.

"No, thank you, that oversight and we would have had a mess on our hands," the Chief let out a deep breathe.

"And I think I know why," one acne covered Cadet said. He had a large triangular shaped nose.

"Please, don't keep it to yourself cadet," the Chief urged.

"Well, I looked through the log and just before the system kicked off, it received a corrupted packet, or what the computer registered as a corrupted packet on the secondary transceiver," the Cadet said showing the Chief the log reports.

Jessika walked over and looked over the kids shoulder. Her eyes gazed over the log reports. "Buffer overflow here. It's an exploit. What program is that running?"

"Command Navigation Program, Sir" the Cadet said.

"CNP…Wasn't there just a new update recently?" the Chief asked.

"Yeah, about six months ago," another Cadet answered.

"Oh, frack," the chief uttered dashing for the nearest phone. She tapped the switch for CIC.

"Combat," the voice on the other side answered.

"CIC, this is Chief Wilson. We have a problem with an exploit in the Command Navigation Program. I recommend going to Condition One and switch to back up systems. We need to recall all fighters and Raptors out there."

"Copy that Chief," the voice called out. "We'll notify the Commander."

The Chief turned around to the Cadets, "Begin looking at the previous version. See if they contain the exploit and figure out a way to patch the system!"

Flight Ops

A flash lit up for a split second. One of the nuggets had scored a direct hit smoking a drone. It was followed up by a rather loud victory yell from the young pilot.

A sudden announcement from flight control came over the wireless. "Olympia…all…return…base, repeat…base," the static-filled message said.

"Did she just say, R-T-B?" Charmer questioned trying to tune the frequency to get a clearer signal. "I can't hear a fraking thing with all this EMI."

The call was repeated a second time. This time Miller was able to get the missing words. "All right, bring it in," he ordered to the Vipers and Raptors. The various flights acknowledge the order and turned back towards Olympia.

A minute after turning towards the Olympia, the signal became clearer through the EMI: "All Vipers, this is Olympia flight control, emergency recall, all craft return to base."

"Emergency?" Charmer said over the comms, "What's that all about?"

Miller paused for a moment and answered on the group channel, "I have no idea." The CAG switched his primary coms to address all fighters, "We're on emergency recall, combat landings."

"Attention all inbound vipers, this the LSO, did you just request combat landings?" the Landing Safety Officer's voice overpowered on the coms.

Miller flicked the switch to communicate directly with the LSO, "Correct. Not everyday we get an emergency recall order. Time to practice up. Combat landings are something we hardly ever do."

There was a pause. Miller knew the LSO was making a call to CIC for approval. "Roger Observer One, flight decks clear and ready to receive combat landings," the LSO announced.

"We never do it because that's how accidents happen. And you know how prissy Wilson gets about accidents," Charmer warned. "In fact, I'm surprised the Old Man actually approved the request."

Miller thought about it for a moment. The CO hated taking risks. It was one of the reasons the Skipper was giving the assignment of training young crews. His ultra conservative command style fit in well with fostering an effective training environment.

"So am I, let's just hope none of the kids frack this thing up," Miller told his wingman adding, "Or the XO's going to have both our asses in hack.

Chapter 8

The ground rattled again as the dim glow of the lights flickered once again. The battery power would not last long as most of the cells were corroded from decades of neglect. While the government provided funding to keep the shelter operational, it was far from being well maintained. Still the air filters and other key systems seemed to be functioning as the dosimeters all read trace amounts of high energy particles getting through the rock.

"How much radiation is that?" Maxell questioned Andreas.

Andreas did not answer in frustration of trying to read the instructions in the dim light. "Trace amounts," he finally answered the Governors question. "And there have been at least a dozen close hits. I'd say the rock is keeping out most of the hard stuff."

"It should," Anatolia shrugged still sipping on her glass of wine. "Those walls are solid led."

"We should take our Anti-radiation meds," Maxell said reaching for the med kit.

Andreas' hand came down hard on the Governor's wrist, "No!"

"We have to protect ourselves," Maxell insisted.

"No," Andreas insisted. "We only have a limited amount and we're going to be dealing with fallout for weeks, months, and probably years. So we don't start using them until the patches and needles turn orange. Anything less than that and you'll live a nice long life before you start to develop cancer."

"Here, eat these," Gina said offering the salt tablets around the room. "They will protect your thyroid from some types of radiation."

"Those, we have a billion of, so enjoy," Andreas encouraged taking two himself.

"So long as they don't dehydrate us first," Anatolia gagged.

"Hey, the Boss made it down," Vinny walked in.

"What about the others?" Gina asked. Vinny shook his head. "How many total?"

"Maybe a couple dozen," Vinny said, but the Boss made it.

"Is he okay?" Andreas said.

Vinny nodded, "A little shook up, but doc says he'll live."

"Broady?" Andreas asked.

"He's makin' sure the boss gets his privacy," Vinny answered. "Also, they've gotten the wireless link up and running."

"No, that will give our position away," Gina urged. The others looked at her, especially Anatolia. "Right? If we broadcast, can't they home in on the signal?"

"She's right," Andreas answered. "But we can listen."

"Andreas, see to it," Maxell ordered. Andreas nodded and followed Vinny.

"Some broad the Governor has," Vinny commented as they walked down the cramp, narrow, brick lined tunnel. The concrete floor was cracked with pools of water splashing as they entered a small chamber with twenty year old radio equipment hissing in the background.

"What's going on?"

"I don't know," the young kid manning the radio said. He was just one of the waiters caught in the wrong place. "Most of the stations are off the air, only thing we're getting is a colonial emergency broadcast telling us to stand by for instructions."

"Stand by while the world is destroyed," Vinny sniped.

"Your government tax dollars at work," Andreas said. "Spend billions of cubits building a communication system to tell you to wait for further instructions in case of emergency."

"Can you get anything else?"

"I'm getting something in some of the upper bands, but it just sounds like a repeating thump," the Kid zeroed in on the signal.

"What the hell is that?" Andreas said.

"Sounds like heart beat," Vinny said.

"No," the Boss said walking in with Broady close behind. "That's a Colonial military signal," the Old man said pulling out a brick sized device. It was one of the smallest computers any of them had seen. "Let's see if we can connect this box to the receiver."

"What's that?"

"That is a model nine-seventeen decoder box. I got it from the R&D labs. One of the scientists owed his bookie. Apparently a smart guy, but liked betting on the Pyramid games and only picked losers. Couldn't pay up and gave us this," The Boss said. "It can read what the fleet's saying and they can't listen to us."

Chapter 9

Miller powered down his Viper as the chief attached the ladder and scrambled up to assist the pilot with his exit from the fighter. "What the frak is going on?" the CAG demanded.

"We're at Condition Two," Wilson stated with an unusually frantic look on her face.

"What's wrong?" Miller asked sternly, noting her frustrations with trying to loosen the harness straps.

"One of the Cadets found a signal in the logs. Apparently the signal contained a program able to access the Viper's computer via a backdoor in the updated CNP program," Wilson informed the CAG. "To top it all off, the Viper reactivate on its own and tried to take off and fire weapons in side the hanger deck as though a ghost had taken control of the fighter."

"You better not be fraking with me," Miller snarled. He noticed the unusually tense look on the Chief's face. "How the frak could that happen?" the CAG demanded standing up and taking brief moment to stretch. "Was there any damage?"

"Thank the Gods, no," the Chief answered sliding down the ladder to make room for the CAG. "The ammunition was unloaded and the tanks drained. There was enough fuel in the RCS thrusters, though, allowing it to slam against one of the bay pylons."

"You said this was the results of something being tripped by the CNP program right, then why weren't the Raptors effected?" Captain Miller asked.

"We don't know, sir. Could be some of the gear filtered out the signal," the Chief answered as Miller wiggled free of the restraints and climbed down to the deck. "Or the computer virus hasn't taken control of the computers yet. We drained all inactive Raptor fuel stores just incase.

"What about the ship, doesn't she carry…"

"Yeah, the Old Man is down with the snipes making sure. But, apparently we're still running off outdated software. The CNP program is on the main computer, but never loaded," the Chief answered.

Miller looked over. Two old Mark Two's were out from storage undergoing an emergency overhaul. "Let me guess, that's what's left," The CAG snickered.

"All the Mark Sevens appear to be vulnerable. We do have the twelve Mark Fives the cadets are using. They have just a basic avionics program," the Chief stated.

"Yeah, but they also don't have any guns. They were designed for countermeasure work before the Raptor," Miller said.

The chief shrugged, "Still, they are flyable."

"Yeah, but flyable with no guns doesn't count, Chief," Miller said sliding down the ladder.

"Sit rep," Commander Belu demanded as he stepped into CIC. There was a cadre of techs standing around every computer terminal with panels off and wires running everywhere.

"Sir, we've been analyzing the systems and we think we have found something in the CNP program," Lieutenant Jacob Rhodes, the Senior Watch Officer, informed the Old Man. Rhodes graduated with high honors from Kobol University in mathematics and joined the fleet to support his young wife and two kids.

The Senior Watch Officer handed the CO a copy of the code print out with a section highlighted by a large roughly drawn red circle.

The Old Man looked at the lines of symbols and letters, very little of which he actually understood. He was a command officer, not an engineer. "Bottom line this for me," he demanded handing the ream of paper back to his Senior Watch Officer.

"It's an exploit in the program," the Rhodes explained.

"Exploit?" The XO barked. "What do you mean an exploit? That program was checked, rechecked, and checked again for over two years by the best minds in the colonies. How could something like this get past all that?"

The young L-T shook his head, "I don't know sir. It could be a bug, or it could have been something accidentally left in the code for testing."

"Or someone could have put it there on purpose," the Skipper said quietly.

"Your not honestly suggesting sabotage?" the XO asked. The area around Command and Control went silent at the thought sunk in for a few moments. "Who would want to do something like that?" The Old Man shot his XO a quick glance. Grant's heart sank at the though the Cylons could be responsible for this action. The Major gulped, "The Cylons?"

Everyone looked at each as a low rumbled broke out as the crew whispered their thought and fears at the possibility that this was something created by the Cylons. Who would work with toasters was a common thought.

Rhodes admitted, "It's possible. But after looking at this signal, it's pretty clear the purpose was to compromise any computer with the installed Command Navigation Program and shut it down."

"How many ships in the fleet have this program?" The XO questioned.

"It was supposed to be installed on every ship, including the fighters, and the raptors, and most civilian ships with weapons," Rhodes answered.

"Things like this have happened in the past. We've had terrorists and criminals hack systems before and succeed," the Old Man stated. "Any chance this was just some kid fraking with the fleet for kicks?"

"But this was a narrow spectrum signal on very specific channels that was received by the viper, Sir," the Watch Officer countered. "It was meant to exploit this specific vulnerability and allow the hacker to gain access to the main computer. Who ever did this had to have access to the Defense Mainframe on Caprica. It's the only way they could know what channels our systems are operating on."

"The Defense Maine Frame?" The XO said shocked. "My Gods, any idea how much damage someone could do?"

"Could they take control of say an entire ship?" the Old Man asked.

Rhodes shrugged, "It's possible, but the main priority seemed to be system commands. Actually, just a single command: shutdown."

"And once the command was sent, the computer went offline leaving the fighter helpless," the XO stated. "Sounds like something some computer genius kid would pull for kicks," Grant offered with some relief in his voice. He could see some kid or anti-government group pulling something like this off. "The amount of people the stunt could harm be damned."

"Yeah, but it came back to life," one of the young crewwomen boldly spoke up. She gulped knowing she not the rank nor experience to butt into the conversation. After a a quick glance from the Commander, she finished, "It might be scuttlebutt, sir, but I heard in the Enlisted Mess that the fighter came back alive from one of the deckhands. He said it as though the Viper was controlled by a ghost."

The Old Man was stiff. He said nothing in response as a cold chill came over his body. The XO noticed the momentary shudder. Then he remembered looking on the calendar next to his wash sink.

"She's right," the Watch Officer confirmed. "Just before the shutdown command was given, there was a small data burst, just a few packets. The logs cataloged it as an incomplete or corrupted file." Rhodes pointed to the lines in a print out of the logs.

CIC went silent as the crew stopped what they were doing and gave each other puzzled, concerned looks hoping the Old Man would dismiss the idea. But the Skipper just stood there with a stiff upper lip.

The XO coldly announced, "Yesterday was Armistice day…my Gods, you don't think…"

The silence was suffocating. Not even a random cough echoed in CIC from the crew. Things were beginning to fall into place. A mysterious signal, a backdoor exploit in a critical Fleet wide protocol, a Viper's computer suddenly going mad and acting as though it had a brain all made sense now. However, it was a conclusion no one wanted to admit.

"Surely not after forty years," the XO dismissed his last statement.

The Skipper walked over to Command and Control and looked at the plotter deep in thought. He looked at their position, far away from the Twelve Colonies, alone and without the supports ships of Battlestar Group Twenty-Three for support. The crew slowly went back to work, but the tension in CIC began to wear on each one of the young kids as they disconnected the primary networks and attempted to bring the back-up computers online after a decades old slumber.

"And the officer is late," the Old Man finally broke his self-imposed silence. "Begin jump prep, just far enough outside the cloud to reestablish long range communications. Silence our transponders."

"Sir," the Senior Watch Officer cautiously hesitated. "The FTL computer is down. The techs are checking it out making sure there isn't any exploits in the old navigation program we're still running on. Plus all this EMI mucking up the FTL fix…."

"You're a mathematician, begin Jump prep, do the calculations manually. You still remember how to read jump charts don't you, Lieutenant?" The Old Man ordered.

The young officer gave a brief pause, "Aye, Aye sir." He dashed up to the FTL terminal and opened a small bin dragging out the jump charts and began making his calculations.

"If they are attacking, shouldn't we send a force recon of Raptors out side the storm to report, maybe keep from revealing our position too soon?" the Major Grant quietly asked the Skipper.

The Old Man braced himself up against the plotter and gave a look to his XO. It was look Major Grant had not seen in his four years of serving with the Commander. The XO gulped as he waited for the words out of the old man.

Commander Belu gave the order, "Action stations!"

The alert klaxon blared in the hanger deck. Captain Miller looked at a clock. It was only eleven hundred. "That's odd, I thought the training op was scheduled for fourteen hundred," he uttered to himself.

A nervous voice boomed over the 1MC. It was the Senior Watch Officer's voice cracking, "Action stations, Actions stations, this is not a drill, repeat this is not a dill."

The deck crew perked up and began to look at each other in confusion. The Chief turned to the CAG and let out a quick gasp before taking charge, getting people to their stations and having some of the deckhands suit up in fire control gear. After the initial shock wore off, the crew began to act as a well-choreographed team as they relied on their training.

The XO's voice continued over the speakers, "Set Condition One throughout the ship, make preparations for combat jump."

The pilots turned to the CAG flabbergasted. What were they to do? All the fighters were grounded until further notice. Miller looked lost not having any answers. He had never been under a combat alert, at least not a real one. All the others and been drills during his career.

He rushed to the nearest communications station and grabbed the handset and tapped for CIC. It took a few moments for someone to answer, as the XO's voice continued to bark orders over the loud speaker to damage control and the marines.

"CIC," a young female voice finally answered.

"This is the CAG, I need to speak with the Commander," Miller told her. He waited a brief moment as the Old Man picked up.

"This is Actual, go ahead."

"Actual, CAG. The hanger deck is full of grounded Vipers, what do you want the pilots to do?"

"How many craft are flyable?"

"Just the Raptors and a pair of Mark Two's…and we're not sure if the Mark Twos will even power up," the CAG responded.

CIC was filled with activated as crewmembers raced to their posts and additional crew arrived from their secondary stations. Soon several fully armed Marines arrived at each of the two blast doors into the oval shaped room.

The XO had flipped over to the conversation. He held the microphone with his hand and quietly commented to the old man, "The Raptors seemed to be immune to the signal right?" The Old Man turned and looked at the XO.

The Hanger deck was sealed with all crew reporting to station. Several of the deck hands were busy putting on fire fear and rebreathers ready for damage control. Captain Miller stood at the communications terminal and listened to the orders coming from the Commander himself.

"I want a pair of Raptors ready to launch in five minutes. Recon mission, and I want you leading the mission," the Old Man commanded over the wired communications system.

"Sir," the CAG countered, "I'm not a qualified Raptor pilot."

"Find one," the Old Man barked, "Actual, out."

The connection was broken by CIC. Miller held the handset away from his ear and uttered to himself in frustration, "Right."

Charmer was standing close by. "What's going on?"

Miller looked at his flight suit. "You're qualified to fly the Raptor, right?"

"Yeah, just barely though," Charmer answered. "Extra pay," he shrugged.

"Get your gear ready, we launch in five," the CAG said walking back towards the main hanger deck looking for the Chief. Jessika was a few paces away looking over some flip charts. Miller approached her from behind, "I need…"

She raised a finger cutting the CAG off. It was a serious non-verbal slap in the face to a superior, but given the circumstances, Miller paused.

Her eyes were fixated on the commission dates of all the Vipers on board the ship. She kept a quite tally on the series numbers knowing when each batch was rolled off the factory floor. It took her another minute to finish her flip through the charts.

It seemed like an eternity to the CAG as the Chief turned around. "I think I can get you at least eight Mark Sevens in a couple hours," She said.

"Great!" Miller grinned, "But how?" It was the first good news he had heard all day.

"I need to look up some of the batch numbers in the records, but I counted at least eight that are more than two years old. We can do a hard wipe of their memories and reload from the firmware," she told him.

"Wipe out the CNP upgrades," the CAG followed.

"Systems won't be tweaked, but they'll fly," she told him.

"Do it," the CAG ordered almost forgetting what he was coming over for, "Oh, and I need two Raptors ready to launch in about two minutes."

"Twelve ninety and Three Zero One are available," she pointed out. "But they do have the vulnerable CNP program loaded."

"Three Zero One was out last night, wasn't it?" the CAG tried to recall from the report.

"Yes, and it appeared to be unaffected….or," the Chief warned ominously, "Who ever was hacking the system may have left a little present for later."

"A Turon horse?" Miller replied.

"You know what they say about Gemenese bearing gifts," the Chief shrugged.

The CAG stood there for a moment. "Hey, aren't you from Gemenon?"

Jessika walked away with a sheepish grin over her shoulder.



Chapter Ten

"Unknown contacts on dradis," the XO shouted looking up at an intermittent contact on the dradisconsole above command and control.

"Helm, move the ship for best possible solution with the port side secondary battery," the Skipper ordered.

"Fire Control reports they have an estimated firing solution," Rhodes reported.

"Tell the gunners to standby," the CO said with a stiff upper lip.

"Wait!" Rhodes shouted, "We're getting Colonial ID, it is one of the Raptors, sir."

"They just launched ten minutes ago," the XO said with concern.

"We're getting a transmission over wireless," the tall, bald, dark-skin man at communications said.

"On speaker," the CO ordered. The frantic voice of Jockey, one of their better Raptor pilots, filled CIC.

"Olympia, there's a fraking war going on out there! The Cylons are back and in force. They took the Colonial Fleet by surprise and there have been heavy losses. The Scorpion shipyards are gone and Fleet HQ on Picon is under heavy sustain nuclear bombardment."

Silence befell CIC. The only sound the swooshing from the dradis echoing off the hard deck and bulkheads. The Skipper slowly paned around CIC looking at the shock, fear, and horror filled the faces of the kids around him. He had seen the same looks before, in his youth, during the First Cylon War.

Something Admiral Nagala, once told the Old Man was coming to the front of his mind. Nagala's saying was to always keep a stuff upper lip because, if the crew saw it tremble, even in the slightest, they panicked. And if they panic, the battle is lost before it even begins.

With defiant anger, the CO grabbed the handset. "Put me on the One M-C," he ordered. The old warhorse was snorting once again. The years of mellow complacency gone, washed away in seconds. The Old Man was back, his heart back into the fight.

The ship's intercom chimed once again followed by the Old Man's stern, bitter, now resolute voice. "This is the Commander. We have just received reports that the Cylons have launched an all out offensive on the Colonies. Details are sketchy, but the reports are the Scorpion Shipyards have been struck and the Fleet Headquarters on Picon is under sustained heavy bombardment. Our friends, our families are out there, depending on what we do right here, right now. Remember that."

Commander Belu calmly replaced the handset to its cradle. "Time till Jump Prep is complete?"

"I need at least another hour," Rhodes shook his head.

"Thirty minutes," the Commander ordered.

"But, sir, that's not enough to double check our calculations, If we're off…" the Lieutenant protested.

"Mister Rhodes. Our people, your family, are under attack by the Cylons. We're making our first jump outside the storm and there's nothing there but lots of empty space. Now I ask you again, how much longer until we're ready for jump?" the Commander insisted.

Rhodes gulped trying not to think about his wife and two young kids. "Aye, sir, I'll have them in fifteen minutes, Sir."

The XO approached the Commander's side and said under his breathe, "He's right about the calculations. If we're off…"

"Our people are dying out there, Major!" the Commander yelled. "We need to get this ship into the fight as soon as possible."

"Then why this jump outside of the storm, sir? Why not just jump into orbit above Picon?" The XO shouted back.

"Because," the Commander said lowering his voice, "We don't know what the situation is."

"The situation is there is a war going on, and from the sounds of it, we're not faring very well. We need to jump and engage the Cylons now, Sir," Grant said defiantly.

"Jump into the middle of a combat zone blind?" The Commander gave a moment for the XO to pause and think about the situation for just a moment. "No, I want to assess our situation. Besides, it's going to take two jumps to get to Picon regardless. We're on the edge of the Red Line and given the last time we had our FTL overhauled...last thing I want is to blow us up."

Young teenagers made up most of the deck crew. They turned to Chief Wilson and the other NCO's waiting to see their reactions. "You heard the man, we have work to do!" Jessika shrieked clapping her hands together to motivate her young enlisted personnel. "These four Vipers are ready, get 'em to the tubes!"

She walked over to one young girl in tears. "Come on Nancy, I need you in the game."

"Game!" the young deckhand cried. "My brother is assigned to H-Q on Picon," she gasped. "And my parents were supposed to be on Caprica for vacation."

"Look," Jessika said in a softer tone, "So far it sounds like Caprica has been spared. We all know people out there, but we know people here too. Look at them."

Jessika pointed to the pilots milling around waiting for fighters to become available. Some had dumbfounded looks on their faces, mostly the cadets, but the bulk of them were prancing around asking what they could do to help. They were itching to get into the fight.

Jessika turned back to the young deckhand, "They're ready to kick some Cylon ass and they need your help. Now, get to work fueling those Mark Two's! And everything you get tired or ache or whatever, think of your family and remember what it means to avenge him."

The young deckhand looked at the Chief's unchanging expression and nodded. Nancy jogged over to the fueling station and began dragging a hose to the nearest Mark Two looking for the right port to attach the nozzle.

"Sir, the other Raptor just jumped in," Rhodes reported.

"Patch me through the wireless," the CO instructed. "Recon One-one, this is Olympia Actual, report."

There was a few seconds of static before Miller's voice came through. Probably a slight delay due to range. "Reports are fragmented and sketchy at best. The Fleet reports of massive equipment failures and we can confirm the Defense Mainframe on Caprica has been compromised. So far the reports are fleet wide and consistent. Fighters squadrons, even entire battlestars are just shutting down as though someone pulled the plug, sir."

"What about the fleet?" the Skipper asked.

"Admiral Nagala has taken personal command of the Fleet on board Battlestar Atlantia and ordered all available ships to engage the Cylons at Virgon," the CAG answered.

The skipper was glad he had not put this conversation on the speaker. "How are the defenses holding?"

"They're not," the CAG said bitterly, "So far, we counted at least twenty Battlestars either disabled or destroyed and no reports of victories against Cylon Basestars. The few fighters that are having success are old or have not had their navigation programs updated."

"We'll debrief in mission planning as soon as you're back on board," the CO said. "Actual out." The Skipper slammed the receiver in to its cradle and pounded the plotter shocking most of the crew.

The XO walked over and quietly whispered into the Old Man's ear, "Reports aren't good I take it."

"No," the CO said speaking from his diaphragm projecting his voice clearly. Voice was an important part of being in command. If it cracked so did the crew. If it was stern and resolute, the crew would respond. This was a trick he learned from many Commanders and Admirals in his life and it was paying off now.

The XO raised his voice to match, "What is the news then?"

"So far, we've lost twenty Battlestars," the CO said to several gasps and gulps among the kids that surrounded him.

"My Gods, and the Cylons?" the XO said coldly wondering how many ship the Cylons had lost. He knew the Cylon attack strategy: attack in mass and attempt to overwhelm Colonial Forces. Machines did not fear death and often flew their disc shaped fighters into the flight pods of Battlestars. Olympia was built after these tactics were known and two huge blast doors could seal off and protect the flight pods in combat. It was the only Battlestar left in the fleet with such a feature.

The Skipper just shook his head.

The XO was lost at this point. OCS barely touched on real world combat tactics, just the basic concepts of battle. This was something Major Grant found himself ill prepared for and nothing no book could teach him. From the Skipper's reaction he could tell this battle was one sided, and they were on the loosing side.

Chapter 11

Insert more stuff with the ground here Chapter 12

Miller walked into Mission planning. The other squadron leaders were already assembled in their flight gear along with the Chief and the Commander. The XO remained in CIC as called for during times of war.

"Sit rep," the CO demanded.

"The situation doesn't look good. So far the Fleet has lost every engagement against the Cylons. There have been battles reported throughout the Colonies. Picon, and the Fleet Headquarters, seemed to be their first target. After they began orbital bombardment with nukes, President Adar offered an unconditional surrender," the CAG reported.

The gathered crew looked at each other with sorrow wondering how things could be going that badly for humanity. A few gasped, other gulped, others stood there in stony ice-cold silence at the word surrender. Surrender was not a word in the everyday vocabulary of military personnel. Wearing the uniform meant fighting or dieing, not waving a white flag and giving up.

"And their response?" Jewels rudely asked.

Miller just looked at her with a blank stare. All he could do was blink as he tried to find his voice, but it was gone. He was trying to speak, but nothing a dry squeak came out. Miller gulped and answered, "They began nuking Caprica."

Julie put her hands over here face in disbelief as a tear began to form.

"The president?" Commander Belu asked.

"No word," Miller reported.

"Chief, what about the fighters?" the Commander barked taking back control of the briefing before things got too far off track.

Jessica's thoughts were elsewhere as she thought about her brother, a graduate student at Caprica University just outside of Caprica city.

"Chief!" the CO shouted startling the Chief out of her daydream.

"Sorry, sir," she apologized. "My head was else where."

"They'll be time for that later," Belu reprimanded her, "How many fighters do we have?"

"We have sixteen ready to fly in the starboard flight pod and another twenty in the Port flight pod. However, I looked up the series numbers on the others. Most of the Mark Sevens are less than a year old. Even if we did a hard wipe, the firmware would still have the faulty Command Navigation Program on there," Chief Jessika Wilson answered. "It will take us the better part of a day to downgrade the remaining vipers."

"Now, you said there were reports of ships being disabled?" The CO asked the CAG satisfied with the Chief's report.

"Correct," Miller acknowledged. "In fact, their reports sound exactly like what happened to our Viper, power and weapons systems disabled."

Chief Jessika Wilson added, "Other programs with built in backdoors."

"Unlikely, the CNP was designed to be integrated with the Defense mainframe. Since we never got around to loading the program, Mr. Rhodes believes we're relatively safe," the Commander told the pilots and deck chief. "Apparently the CNP linked vital systems."

"And with that link removed," the Chief followed, "then there shouldn't be any problems."

"What about wireless?" Major Loren asked.

"CNP was designed, at least from why I read from the specs, to work on its own channels independent of the main communications system. You won't have long range, but short range communication should not be disrupted," Wilson answered.

"Even so, we've taken the precaution of setting up additional firewalls and begun de-linking computers," The Commander told the group. "It's taking a really fraking long time to calculate FTL jump coordinates."

"CNP has dedicated Nav link hardware, right?" the CAG asked.

"Yeah," the Chief nodded.

"What if you disabled the hardware?" Miller proposed.

Jessika began nodding, "We'll have to physically disable the hardware and in theory that should work. However, I don't even understand how the CNP program all works. Doctor Baltar is a genius."

"Baltar?" Lt. Loren inquired.

"The man who wrote the program," the Chief answered.

"Some genius, eh? He wrote a program that allowed the Cylons to hack our systems," Lieutenant McMillan joked.

"Ladies and Gentleman, we have tasks to perform. Chief, how long to disable whatever you have to disable on those fighters," the Old Man took over the briefing noting the time.

"They hardware...just Minutes, sir," Jessika replied. "Especially if we use the quick method."

"Which is?" Major Loren asked.

"Hammer to the arrays, smash 'em to pieces," Jessica shrugged.

Captain Miller thought about the statement for a moment. "What about the wireless?"

"Ship to ship and squadron wireless communication is on a completely different relay circuit, they'll be fine. Trust me," the Chief answered.

"Get to it," the Skipper ordered. "With the FTL back up computer slower than a snail, we can't plot a single jump to Virgon. If the Cylons have cracked the defense mainframe, then they probably know about the orders to regroup. My guess is that they've moved some of their forces from Picon to either assist at Virgon or the assault on Caprica," the CO suggested.

"Won't they leave behind a garrison?" Major Loren stated remembering his Cylon tactics classes during advanced combat training.

The CO nodded, "That's exactly what I'm hoping. Probably two, maybe three raider squadrons and a Basestar."

"A Basestar against this old bucket?" Lt. McMillan protested. "Sorry, sir, but we're not exactly at a hundred percent combat effectiveness. Especially with our guns on manual control and over half our vipers iffy."

The Commander shot the young pilot a quick glare. "She's old, but she was no bucket."

"Aye, sir," Jewels apollogetically answered.

"Maybe not, but it will have to do. We go to war with what you've got, not what you want. We'll send three Raptors in first to locate enemy formations and relay their positions," the CO pointed out on a top down map of the Twelve Colonies. "We'll then plot a jump to the closest Basestar and open fire as soon as the jump is complete. Once a defensive perimeter has been established, we'll scramble all available fighters to intercept incoming raiders. We have thirty-six fighters, I want half experienced pilots and half nuggets."

"What? Why, sir?" the CAG protested, "Don't we want our best pilots out there, especially with the number of fighters we have?"

"Fighters we can replace, pilots we can't. Especially the experienced ones. I have to have someone to turn my nuggets into cubits," the Skipper warned. It was clear the CO knew not everyone in the room would be coming back. By the sound of things, none of them would live to see the following day.

"Only if we win this battle," Major Loren sighed.

"I'm not planning on winning, the goal is a simple: hit and run. Once we can jump again, we'll recall fighters and inflict as much damage on the Basestar, or stars, and get the hell out of there. Hopefully the Cylons will start chasing us and give some civvies the chance to escape," the Skipper told the pilots and chief.

"And then what, they follow us and then what do we do?" the Chief boldly questioned

"Then we go to Aquaria," the CO announced. "So far they've been spared from heavy attack. Hopefully, they'll be some civilian ships with weapons and no CNP program to help cover us. We're pretty vulnerable in the aft without flack support."

"I'll get to work on those relays," the Chief took her leave of the group and rushed back to the Hanger Bay. She knew their success would rest on how quickly her teams got the fighters ready for action.

"The rest of us better get to preflight," Major Loren suggested to the CAG.

The Old Man took off his gold rimmed glasses and placed them on the plotter. "Captain, Major Loren, could you two wait for a moment."

"Sure," Miller said as the others exited leaving only the two men behind. "What do you need, sir?"

"To chat," the Old Man said as the other pilots and crew exited the room slamming the pressure door behind them. The three men stood there. Miller and Loren waited as Belu stood eye level with Miller and looked up at the slightly taller Major Loren.

Miller gave the Commander an odd look, "With all due respect sir, but are you sure now is a good time for conversation."

"Never a good time to have this conversation, but we don't have the luxury of time or tact," the Old Man said. "Things have changed. Major Loren will assume the role of Commander Air Group and lead the mission. Captain, I want you in CIC overseeing flight operations. After this mission, you will resume your role as lead flight instructor under the leadership of Major Loren as CAG. Understand?"

"Yes, sir," Major Loren said standing proudly with his chest out giving the old man a salute.

Miller paused a second to let the words sink in to heart. He sighed, "Aye, Aye, Sir."

Belu returned the salute, "Get your men ready, Major. Dismissed. Captain, follow me to CIC."

Loren turned and looked down at the Captain. For two reserve missions the Major had waited for this moment and proudly grinned in victory. No longer would he have to take orders from a Junior Officer. Loren savored the moment as opened the air lock and slammed it behind him wearing a smile all the way down to the briefing room.

Belu and Miller stood in silence for several moments, neither quite sure where to begin. Belu broke the silence by turning around and heading for CIC. He fell back into his normal softer voice for just a moment, "Nothing personal, Captain, but this is war and the Major does outrank you."

"I understand," Miller answered still letting the demotion sink in. "The XO got to you?"

"Partially," Belu admitted. "And a lot of other things. Small things. Your a hell of a pilot and one of the best flight instructors I've met in my day, but..."

"I'm a lousy CAG," Miller begrudgidly admitted now starting to get angry with the Old Man. "Then why didn't you appoint Jewels or someone else..."

"I'm not going to get into this," Belu cut the officer off now back in his command voice. "Not now. I made my decision."

"Yes, sir," Miller offered with a hint of bitterness in his tone. The two continued walked towards Combat.

Belu contined, "Now is not a good time for this, but I don't know what is going happen, so I'll come right out and saw it. Your father would be proud of you. Shame he never got to saw it."

"My father?" Miller said changing his mood completely. In four years of serving under this was only the second time Belu had mentioned Miller's father. "How well did you know my father?"

"Quite well. I served under him on board the Polaris. We were there when the ship was boarded by Cylons," the Commander admitted.

"Polaris, how long ago was this?" Miller questioned recalling in his own mind when he learned the news his father had died in service to the Fleet.

"Twenty-two years ago," the Commander told the thirty-three year old pilot.

The Captain thought about it for a moment, "I was nine…that was after the Cylon war."

"Yes it was, but we found an old ship," Belu muttered softly recalling the horrors he saw those short days. "We were there for six days. On the seventh we were ambushed by a Basestar."

Miller shot the old man an odd look, "I never heard anything about this...at least he never said anything around us. He said they were out resupplying an observatory or something."

"All lies. The Spooks got to us first and debriefed us about the things we saw. We were ordered never to speak of the things we saw to anyone. And for twenty-two years I've followed my orders to the letter," the Old Man told the Captain.

"So what happened?" Miller offered empathetically, "What did you see?"

"The Polaris was boarded. We fought them, but they were unlike any Centurions we saw during the war. These models were upgraded, designed for combat. They were sleek and fast, built to be killers. The damnest thing was that there was a human among them commanding these units."

"The Cylons were designed to serve humans, originally, correct?" Miller recalled.

The Old Man remembered the days of Cylon Nanies, Cylon servants, and Cylon cooks. "Correct," Belu gasped.

"Maybe this batch never got the update? Maybe they never got the message the war began and they thought you were from a rivial Colony? I mean remember that one remote outpost the fleet found like twelve years after the war ended. They didn't even know the war was over. Still had Mark I vipers," Miller remembered from his history classes.

"No, this was different. They knew the war and happened and was over. Anyway, they boarded the Polaris. It wasn't a pretty sight. Just a handful of centurions ripped us apart. I was the CAG at the time, your father was Major and Senior Watch Officer," the Commander recalled. "I managed to launch in my Viper Mark Five and power down. Cylon's ignored me and my ECO in the debris."

"I never heard Dad say anything about the Polaris. Nor my mother for that matter," Miller admitted.

"After we were rescued, the surviors made a promise. We would rendezvous at these coordinates in case of a Cylon attack," Commander Belu said pulling out a piece of yellowed, wrinkled paper.

The Commander walked over and looked the CAG in the eyes. "Your father's not here, but I'll extend that promise to you.

"What's this?" Miller asked seeing a piece of paper.

"Coordinates. There will be a Raptor on Alert Five. If things go badly, take it and jump there," Belu handed the yellowed piece of paper to the Captain. "I keep my promises."

Chapter 14

"Jump complete, two contacts on DRADIS," Rhodes reported.

"Cylons?" the XO demanded.

"Negative, they appear to be civilian transports. Two heavy transports, they're hailing us asking for help, sir," Rhodes reported.

"Launch Raptors," the CO ordered. "Do these transports have FTL?"

"Aye, sir," Lt. Rhodes replied.

"Give them jump coordinates to Aquaria and tell them we'll rendezvous with them after the attack," the Skipper said.

"Raptors have made their jump," the XO reported.

"The transport captains wish to speak with you, sir," the Communications Officer informed the Commander.

The Old Man grabbed the handset, "This is Battlestar Olympia Actual to Piconese Transports, what is your status?"

"We have about eight hundred passengers on each ships and enough supplies to last a few days, maybe a couple weeks," the Captain replied. "We managed to jump away just as the Cylons launched their first salvo. Please, we need assistance! Help us Commander. We have no weapons, we're strictly a transport"

"My Watch Officer is sending you coordinates. Are your FTL drives working?"

"Yes, sir, Commander. We already have them spooled and ready on a moments notice," the transport Captain answered.

"Good. Jump to the coordinates we are sending and wait two hours. If you do not hear from us, get as far away from the colonies as you can. We'll try and come back for you before then," the CO said moving his hand across his throat for the Communications Officer to cut the ship to ship.

"You're leaving us? Please, we have no defense other than to run," the Captain pleaded.

"I understand, but there are other transports trying to leave the Colonies, we have do everything we can to give them a fighting chance. Our first mission is to engage the Cylons," the Commander stated. "We'll be back, I promise." The Commander placed the handset back into its cradle as the XO gave him a dirty look. "What?"

Major Grant cleared his throat before quietly questioning the Old Man, "Sir, should we really be making promises we can't keep?"

"We'll keep it," the Commander declared in a dry monotone voice.

"Sir, transmission from a Comm Drone, we have the coordinates of the enemy positions. I'm relaying them to you now," Lt. Rhodes announced and then began to grin. "Sir, they report two Basestars and three squadrons of fighters on patrol."

The XO looked over the data displayed on one of the screens above the plotter. "If we jump in here, we could attack this Basestar with the bow batteries and hit the other with the primary battery plus the two main guns." Major Grant looked over the reported Cylon fighter patrol routes. "And if we time it right," Grant began giving a dramatic pause, "My gods, we could hit two of their fighter patrols in the tails with the secondary batteries. That leaves only this single squadron here for our pilots to deal with."

The Skipper drew a deep breathe, "You know, until today I always complained about the gun layout of this ship. The Gods are smiling today. Mister Rhodes, we're about to find out just how good your Jump Calculation are."

Space and time constricted as the crew felt the effects of the FTL jump.

"Jump complete!" the Specialist manning the FTL terminal announced.

"Bow batteries have a firing solution on Basestar designated Sierra One, beginning Salvo fire!" Lt. Rhodes shouted. Beads of sweat were forming on his forehead as his heart began to race and his stomach churn. He had seen the latest tally, over forty Battlestars out of commission; either disabled or destroyed.

An older NCO called out, "Primary guns have acquired target, designated Sierra Two, executing offensive firing solution. Starboard Secondary battery reports first salvo away with full spread!"

"Tell the bow gunners to concentrate fire on their central axis," the XO called out. "Those don't look like any Basestar I saw in the recognition guides," The XO commented at the star like image from a targeting camera mounted near the bow guns.

Several bursts from the kinetic energy weapons impacted against Basestar Sierra one. The starfished shaped vessel began erupting into bright orange fireballs. "Sir, target Sierra One has been destroyed. Main Battery reports impacts on Sierra two and defensive perimeter established."

"What the hell are they waiting for?" the XO wondered aloud.

The Skipper just looked at the younger man for a moment. "Probably for their computer virus to take effect," the Old Man said sardonically.

"Incoming missiles from the remaining Cylon Basestar. Defensive perimeter holding steady," Lt. Rhodes announced. "But at the rate they are throwing out ammo..."

"Sir, Basestar designated Sierra Two is registering secondary explosions from the main guns. They're pulling away! Their running for it!" Major Grant announced to some cheers.

The skipper maintained his stiff upper lip and quickly brought the cheers to a halt, "Let them go, Mister Rhodes. Rolls ship for optimum firing solution against the raiders. Mister Miller, launch Vipers, order them to engage Cylon Raiders only."

The Vipers shot out of their launch tubes.

"Blue group, on my wing. Red Team, target the ones on the right, we'll take the center, and stay the frak out of Olympia's firing solution. Remember, those guns are being aimed manually. They aren't going to recognize friend or foe," Major Loren reminded his pilots.

Loren's group of eight Vipers flew straight at the enemy. The shiny new double sickle shaped hulls of the new Cylon Raiders grew larger by the second. At nine hundred, he could see the steady, constant, back and forth motion of their single red glowing eye.

"Shouldn't they be firing missiles?" one of the Nuggets called out.

"Don't give them any ideas," Charmer scolded the rook. He was glad no one could see him shaking as his body was covered in cold chills. Not the type of hero we would want to tell the ladies about.

"They're probably fraking their metal pants wondering why their little virus isn't working," "Stubby" Loren mocked. He was leading fight from his cockpit more concered on what everyone else was doing in addition to trying to get kills and stay alive.

Jewels led the a four-ship group of Red Squad. Ensign Slate was commanding the second element with a rook for a wingman. The fighters raced at the incoming Raiders in a solid line abreast formation. The goal was to get the most fire power away on the first pass, then break into two man pairs and take on remaining Raiders one on one with a wingman covering the lead's six.

"Maybe, but what do you say we show 'em our missiles," Stubby announced to all groups. "Weapons free, let's show these toasters what happened when Colonials shoot back!" Loren locked the lead ship in his sights and fired the first missile. Soon after a flurry of missiles were off and tracking towards their targets with a second salvo quickly following the first impacts. Six of the eight missiles from Blue group hit their marks taking seven enemy Raiders with them.

"Two for one!" one of the Nuggets shouted as he got a lucky score when one raider crashed into another destroying both targets.

"Remember, don't fly in a straight path, watch your six, and support your wingman," the CAG hurriedly shouted out. "Split pairs, bracket high-low on my mark…mark!"

The eight Vipers split off in pairs, each pair concentrating on a single Cylon Raider. The leader of each pair pulled up, the wingman nosed down. The lead ship kept his or her nose on target while the wingman throttled back keeping a buffer between them and the lead ship. It was the goal of the Wingman to keep a raider from getting into a kill slot behind the lead's six.

Jewels was aggressive. She had her four fighters steaming dead on with line of incoming Raiders forcing a pail mail. The decision on tactics quickly cost her two nuggets their lives as their vipers exploded in brief fireballs. Eleven of their fifteen missiles fired did hit their mark putting the melee odds slightly in their favor.

"Major Loren is reporting one squadron of Cylon Raiders destroyed, Blue team is moving to help Red Team mop up," Captain Miller informed command and control. "Red team just lost another fighter, Gold team is waiting in the tubes requesting permission to launch."

"Hold Gold team," the skipper said. "Recall Red Team."

"That'll bring the remaining Raiders right into Blue Team's line of fire," Major Grant observed, taking note of the tactic for later use.

"Red team, this is _Olympia_, you are ordered to return to base, combat landings in the port side landing pod, repeat RTB for combat landings in the Port Landing pod," Miller's voice echoed in the Viper pilots' helmets.

"You heard the man! Haul ass back to the ship!" Jewels ordered spinning her Viper around.

"Red team, this is Blue team…keep 'em coming, we'll have missile lock in twenty seconds," Miller announced. It was too late as another orange flash in the distance marked the spot where a fourth Viper exploded with white tracer fire still streaming past the kill. Loren sighed to himself and thought "not another one." He had quietly been keeping a tally in his head.

"I have tone," Loren announced. "Fox one!" The radio call was repeated four more times has the other three pilots in his flight fired. Miller held the last two missiles of his flight in reserve. Two missiles hit their marks taking out two Raiders. A third was hit, but managed to keep flying and gain on McMillan's craft.

"Jewels, engage defensive, you have a single raider entering your kill slot," Miller called out in vein as he watched a Raider gaining on her fighter.

"Copy that _Olympia_, beginning evasive," She said trying to maneuver her fighter to get a look behind her. The

McMillan's Viper was the fifth victim of the battle.

CIC

"I have an emergency emitter," Lt. Rhodes stated. "Looks like Jewels managed to eject."

"Prepare to launch SAR Raptor Alpha," the Skipper ordered.

"Sir!" Rhodes shouted. "New Contact! Cylon Basestar just jumped right on top of us!" An alert began ringing. "Radiological Alarm, they're launching nukes!"

"All hands, brace for impact!" the XO yelled clutching onto the main plotter as best he could. The warhead impacts shook the ship violently throwing many of the crewmembers to the deck. One had hit his head, lying on the ground unconscious and bleeding. Two of the crew rushed to administer first aid.

"Damage report!" the Commander demanded.

The XO rushed to the Damage Control station. "We lost one of the sublight engines, minor buckling on the starboard aft section, and serious damage to the starboard defensive battery," the young man announced.

"We have zoomies reported in the aft compartments," Rhodes announced. It's a radiation leak in the shielding!"

"How bad?" the CO asked.

A sense of relief filled the Lt.'s voice, "Not much, about a day's worth at Caprica beach without tanning lotion, sir. The armor plating blocked most of the hard stuff."

"Thank the holy engineers that added the second hull," the XO said quietly.

"Any other major damage?" the CO demanded. The XO shook his head. "Well then, let's return the favor. Launch tubes one and three, dial maximum yield and fire when ready!"

"All Vipers, we're launching nukes, break engagement and get back to Olympia!" the Communications officer instructed the pilots.

"Blue team, break engagement and get back to the ship A-SAP!" the CAG ordered as he spun his Mark VII Viper around and began heading back at full throttle. That's when he noticed Ducky's approach. Ducky was one of the rook pilots just out of flight school. His approach was all-wrong as his fighter was drifted too long. He had misjudged the narrow landing slit on Olympia's flight pods: yet another major design flaw of the Midway class Battlestars. "Oh frack," he whispered to himself as the Viper crash into the hull above the landing pod.

Meanwhile the crew in CIC kept a careful watch on their stations. Some were passing along targeting corrections to the gunners from observers watching were each salvo struck. Others were busy listening to the communications traffic between the fighter as the Communication's Officer attempted to glean as much information from the Colonial Defense Grid before they jumped away.

"Commander, one of the Vipers just rampstriked the Port landing pod," the XO shouted. "Minimal structural damage. There are reports of a secondary fire. It's in section thirty-one!"

"Get it out now. If ignites the magazine or gets to the fuel lines, this is going to be the shortest counter attack in history," the Skipper calmly said.

The XO grabbed the override key and without hesitation vented the section to space. He paused for a moment before asking, "How many people were back there?"

"I don't know," the young girl replied in shock.

The XO nodded and walked back to his post at Command and Control. The Commander shot him a quick glance of approval. The Major did as he was ordered without any pausing to wonder about how many people were left in the section. Major Grant knew as well as anyone: fire on board a ship was bad news, especially near a flight pod.

The young female cadet manning damage control reported, "Fires have been extinguished."

"Good," the Commander grunted. "Tactical, status of missiles?"

"Missile tubes one and three fired and tracking on target Sierra three. Impact in seventeen seconds," the Tactical Officer said.

"All remaining Vipers recovered," Rhodes reported.

"Mister Rhodes, begin Jump Prep," the Commander ordered watching the nuke tracks. One of the two missile tracks disappeared as it approached the Basestar.

"Sir, what about our pilots out there? What about the SAR mission," Miller asked quietly. The Old Man stood there for a second.

"Hold launch on SAR Alpha," The Commander ordered. One of the communications officers relayed the frantic order over the wireless.

"I count at least three emergency emitters, Commander, we can't just leave them," Miller boldly challenged.

"Sir, the Cylons intercepted and destroyed track Zero-Three-Three-Two," the Tactical Officer informed Command and Control. "Track Zero-three-three-three is on target and still tracking."

The second missile was over three quarters of its trajectory to target.

"Helm, move to target Basestar designated Sierra Four with Bow batteries, roll the ship to engage Sierra Three with Primary Batteries," the Commander ordered.

"Nuclear Detonation!" the Tactical officer called out. "The missile hit its mark. I'm showing massive damage to the bottom half of the ship."

"Which part is the bottom?" the XO remarked retaking his station at Command and Control.

"Primary batteries now engaging Cylon Basestar Sierra Three," the Tactical Officer announced. A few more seconds passed as the ship shuddered slightly from conventional missile strikes against the hull. "That last impact damaged turret Delta, it has been destroyed, reading decompression in that section!"

The XO dashed again to the Damage Control panel to assess the situation. "All the bulkheads in adjoining sections are holding firm. DC parties are already shutting off O-two supplies to that compartment," the XO shouted to the Commander.

"Sir, Jump prep complete! FTL is spooled and we're ready to jump," Mister Rhodes informed the Commander.

"Thank you Mister Rhodes," The Commander acknowledged. The Skipper paused for a few moments wanting to launch just a few more salvos at the Cylons.

Two more large red circles appeared on DRADIS. "Two more contacts, sir, Cylon Basestars!" Rhodes shouted out.

The XO quietly, but sternly, challenged the Commander, "Sir, we have to go, now. There's no way we can take on four Basestars."

Miller reported, "All remaining fighters recovered."

"Let's leave a going away present," the Commander grinned, "Fire Control, lock tube two on target Sierra one. Target tube five on Sierra Three. Fire when ready." The Tactical Officer confirmed missiles away. "Mr. Rhodes, jump!"

Space and time contracted as the ship flashed to another point in the universe. Everyone was on edge waiting to see if Mister Rhodes was the mathematician he claimed to be.

"Jump is within parameters, we are now in high orbit around Aquaria," Lt. Rhodes reported. "I have several contacts on DRADIS," Rhodes announced has his heart rate picked up again. He let out a sigh of relief, "Sir, they are Colonial ID's including the two Piconese transports," Lt. Rhodes said. The CIC erupted in cheers. They were alive. Somehow they were alive and damaged at least three Cylon Basestars in the process. It was a small victory. The Commander knew this, but he let his young crew have their moment of glory. It would fade fast in the dark days ahead.

The Commander closed his eyes for a brief moment to clear his thoughts, snapping out of his stiff upper lip and to crack a grin and shake his XO's hand. The first of many handshakes hug from the excited and relieved crew

"Sir, I'm detecting well over fifty ships," Rhodes smiled. "They are requesting instructions."

"Commander," the Communications Officer interrupted, "I'm getting a priority one message. It's from the Governor's office on Aquaria. He says they have another ninety FTL capable transports ready to launch and a hundred more sublight transports."

The XO looked at the Commander as the Old Man stood there thinking. "We're a Battlestar, Sir," Major Grant reminded the CO. "We need to repair what we can and make prep to jump to Virgon."

The Commander stood there looking at the charts. They had managed to receive the last updates stored in the Defense Network. Over ninety Battlestars were now out of the fight including familiar names to the old man.

"Oh no," Lt. Rhodes said out loud to himself pulling off the latest print out. He did not realize how well his voice carried as the CIC quieted back down waiting for him to read the message. "Sir," Rhodes began, clearing his throat, "Battlestar Atlantia has been destroyed. Admiral Nagala is dead."

"Who's in command now?" the Old Man demanded.

Rhodes shook his head, "I don't know. I have two print outs. One is from a ship claiming to be Colonial One ordering all ships to a set of coordinates in deep space to assist in rescue operations, the other is from Commander Adama."

"Adama?" The XO Snipped. "How the hell did Galactica survive, she's supposed to be a museum!"

"Well, the message from Adama states to regroup at Ragnar and prepare for counter attack," Rhodes said.

"Adar is alive then," Commander Belu stated with a hint of relief. Adar was not his favorite man, but a fair leader, and that is what the people needed at this time. Although, the quickness at which he offered surrender was quick for the Old Man's taste.

"No, the message from Colonial One was from a Laura Roslin, Sir," Rhodes said.

"Who the hell is that?" The XO barked.

"Secretary of Education," a young crew woman offered meekly. "My older sister had her as a teacher on Caprica"

"My Gods, are things really that bad?" The XO said sharply.

The Commander stood at Command and Control watching the display and DRADIS console as more Colonial signals appeared.

"Sir, the Governor is still demanding to speak with you," the Communications officer reminded him.

The Commander hesitantly picked up a handset and nodded for the message to be patched through.

"Colonial Battlestar, this is the Governor of Aquaria, thank the gods! All the reports we've receive have been dreadful. We've suffered massive orbital bombardment by the Cylons, but we have a lot of transports loaded with people ready to launch. What should we do?" the deep voice said over the wireless.

The Commander looked around at his crew. "Launch all FTL capable craft. We'll try and take as many as we can off the sublights, but if the Cylons show up, we jump. Any ship incapable of FTL travel will be left on its own."

"You're not going to stay and fight? This is treason!" Major Grant barked at the Commander.

Belu scowled at the young Major, "If you don't like it, Major, you can frakking leave the CIC." Major Grant took a step back and stared at the Commander in shock. They had orders, valid orders, to regroup. Under fleet regulations, they were obligated to follow those orders.

"We read that, loud and clear, Olympia," the Governor's voice said. "We are launching the first batch of FTL capable craft now. We'll get as many off the sublights as we can. How goes the battle?"

"We engaged four Cylon Basestars over Picon. We found no evidence of survivors on the plant," the Commander told the Governor, "We barely made it out of there alive. No, Governor, this war is over." Belu took a moment to look his XO straight in the eyes as he had, "We've lost. All we can do now is save as many as we can and run before the Cylons wipe out the human race for good."

"I am about to take off on a transport. We'll rendezvous with you inside of an hour. We can discuss this in person then," the Governor said harshly before hanging up on the Commander.

"How big are these transports?" the Commander asked Lt. Rhodes. "Not large sir, we can fit several into our hanger bays."

"Have as many as you can land in the Starboard Pod and prepare to unload the passengers. Have a detachment of Marines standing by incase there is trouble," the Commander instructed Mr. Rhodes. "And begin jump prep."

"Another Jump?" The XO questioned. "Shouldn't we make repairs first?"

"We'll do what we can here until the Cylons show up," the Commander snapped. The Commander took a moment to calm back down before saying in the voice of a battle hardened old man who knew the war was already lost. "We need to keep on the move before the Cylon's catch up to us. I have a gander that they aren't going to be too happy. Hopefully it's enough to draw their attention away from the other colonies. If they're chasing after us for revenge, maybe more can get away."

"Get away to where, sir?" the young Tactical Officer boldly asked. CIC fell silent as the cheering stopped as the sudden realization that there was no home to go back to began to settle in their minds, but not their hearts.

The Commander, nor the XO, had an answer for that question. It was a question they would have to answer for themselves as well. Where do they go now? What do they do? How do they survive? Questions the Old Man had no answers for, at least not now.

"With all do respect, sir," the Major challenged, "Our first duty is to follow our orders and regroup at Ragnar."

"No," the Commander shook his head passing a note he had seen flash over the communication system. "There's a munitions depot at Ragnar. Galactica had her ordinance removed in preparation for decommissioning. She's caught in the middle of a war without anything to shoot," the Commander said. "Ragnar makes sense. They have plenty of weapons and the storm on the planet doesn't treat Cylons too well."

"Then shouldn't we try and regroup then. Strength in numbers sir?" the Major asked. The Commander just shook his head. "Why not, sir we have to fight, it maybe all we have left!"

"No," the Commander insisted.

"But sir, this is tantamount to treason. We've been given a lawful order to regroup and you are refusing that order! We have to get back into this war and fight!" Major Grant said in a bitter tone.

"Major," the Old Man snapped. "This isn't a war. In a war you have two sides fighting it out for political gains. The Cylons aren't fighting for political gains, Major, their hell bent on a mission: destroy their creators. The best way to win this war is to deprive them of what they seek: total victory. We'll scour outlying Colonial supply caches and try to find as many civvies as we can in the next few days. Then we jump somewhere far away and don't come back."

"And then what?" the XO asked. The Commander glared at his XO. This was not the place. Major Grant knew that the moment he heard the words come out of his mouth. He straightened up knowing that the answer would come someday later. "Given the prospects, I'd rather go down fighting rather than being a coward and running away from a fight!"

"We make a Jump," the Commander answered.

"Where? The Cylons are all over this sector by now," the Communications Officer stated. "It's only a matter of time before they strike the remaining outposts."

"Somewhere, out there, anywhere but here. There are a lot of stars in the Galaxy. With luck we'll find one with a habitable planet that the Cylons will never find," the Command said.

"Sir, that is not our orders!" the XO again protested.

The Commander slammed his fist on the plotter, "Damn it Major! What the hell is wrong with you? Are you so damned thrilled with the idea of going down in a blaze of glory? Why? What's the point when they'll be no one left to remember? Do you really think the Cylons will note in their history books: this was the day Major Barret Grant died in a fiery blaze of glory trying to save his pathetic race from extinction?"

The XO stood there as all eyes turned on the two hovering around Command and Control as the Major glared at the Old Man. Major Grant gritted his teeth, "We have our orders, sir! You are refusing to follow those orders, sir! Under Colonial Fleet regulations, I am forced to relieve you of command. Guards!"

The Old Man stood there as the crew stood frozen watching their two senior officers fight a pissing match with each other.

"Guards!" the XO barked again. The Marines looked at each other and the Commander not sure what to do. "The Commander has been properly relieved under regulations."

No one moved.

"Make your choice," the Commander said to the crew around him. "You can follow the Major and his blind adherence to regulations. Go to Virgon or Ragnar and have the mother of all battles, a grand last stand of humanity against the Cylons and die." The young crew looked at each other in an uneasy silence. "Or you stand with me now. We try to save as many as we can and then run and live to fight another day. Which will it be?"

The choice was simple for most of the crew. A few joined the XO, but most stayed at their post.

"Very well," the XO admitted defeat.

"Guards, escort the XO to the brig under the charge of inciting mutiny amongst the crew. The rest of you, consider yourselves confined to quarters until further notice," the Commander instructed. The Marines placed handcuffs around the Major's wrists and led him out of CIC as the crew look on still unsure what to make of the situation.

They young kids did not like being called cowards, but something about the Commander's words resonated deep inside them. The kids had no death wish, and while they had a mix of emotions, they knew the Old Man was right, it was better to live and fight another day. Besides they had already won a small victory proving they could fight and the Cylons were not invincible.

"Mister Rhodes," the Commander barked.

"Sir?" the young Lieutenant replied not sure what was next.

"You are now acting XO, take your station," the Commander ordered.

Rhodes gulped a second and turned his station over to an experienced NCO and slowly walked to Command and Control not sure really what to do or make of the situation. He took comfort in the thought this was a temporary assignment as one of the pilots would likely be drafted as the permeate replacement for the XO.

"XO," the Commander addressed Rhodes with his new title, "Status of outposts?"

"Yes, sir. I've got signals from at least two refineries and several mining outposts trying to figure out what's going on. And then there is a lot of traffic still on the civilian bands. Ships that were out in space before the attack took place. I'm reading dozens," the acting XO noted.

The Old Man nodded. "Make Jump prep for the nearest group of signals."

"Yes, sir," the Lieutenant eagerly said.

The Old Man turned to the Sergeant of the guard, "I want you to take charge of registering the people on those transports. Find some way to house them on board ship. Take whomever you need to get it done. Also, I want those ships inventoried for parts, supplies, and have the Chief and Major Markov with his snipes began scrapping the ships for parts. Anyone on the crews or passengers that could be useful and willing to help, find them something to do."

"And those not willing to help?" the Rhodes boldly asked.

"Leave them alone for now. Make it clear, so long as they don't cause problems, nothing will happen to them," the Commander instructed the Marine.

"And if they do cause problems?" the Marine Sergeant asked.

"Throw them out the airlock," the Commander answered deadpan.

The XO walked over and whispered to the skipper, "About the airlocks, your being factious, right?"

"No, if they are going to cause problems, I don't want them on my ship. We can't afford to waste the resources on them. From this point foreword, everything is about survival first." the Commander glared at his XO.

Rhodes gulped, "Understood."

Chapter

The hanger deck was flooded with people. Lots of people, mostly women and young children huddled together as members of the crew wrote down their names while others searched for open spaces to house them. Some of the more capable administrators of the crew managed to set up a dozen checkpoints to organize the refugees by colony.

Lieutenant Rhodes walked over to the bulkhead with the Turon flag where the Turonese were gathering. The Chief was standing there helping a group of kids who were on a school trip to Caprica.

"Chief, got a moment," Captain Miller asked politely.

She leaned over and told the kids she would be back in just a few moments and walked over to the former CAG. "What do you need, Captain?"

"Never pictured you as the motherly type," Miller commented off topic.

Jessika let out a sigh, "Well, we were talking about it."

"We?" Miller questioned.

"Yeah, this was going to be my last tour on Olympia. I had accepted a teaching position at a technical school on Caprica. My fiancée had just bought a small cottage in a hamlet outside of Caprica City," the Chief admitted.

Miller stood there stunned. He had known the Chief for over two years and this was the first he heard about her private life. And he thought there were no secrets on Battlestars. Especially between the pilots and the grease monkeys that kept them flying.

"Sorry," Miller offered awkwardly. What else was there to say? Everyone had lost friends and family, but it all seemed distant to the veteran pilot. As though it was something tragic on the nightly news cast, but happened to someone else. This was a disaster that affected all of humanity.

"Right, not much we can do about it," the Chief put into perspective. "What can I do for you?"

"The Commander wants to know if we can double up the Port Flight Pod for flight operations and turn this hanger deck into a make shift refugee center," Miller said.

"I suppose. It would be a tight fit on the Port side," the Chief admitted to the CAG. "But won't that leave the Starboard side a little unprotected?"

"I don't think the Old Man intends on fighting," the CAG said.

The Chief shook her head, "Then what is his plan?"

"I don't know. Scuttlebutt is that he plans to strip the cargo vessels on the flight deck for parts and supplies," the CAG said quietly. "And there's been some kind of problem between him and the XO. I saw Major Grant being hauled to the brig in chains."

"I heard the same rumor," the Chief answered keeping her voice low. "What the frak is happening around here? Are we the enemy or is it the Cylons?"

"Both," Miller sardonically answered. It was not a very comforting or reassuring thought to either of them.

"What about the civvies?" the Chief said looking around at the terrorized faces.

"For now, temporary housing on _Olympia_," the Miller insisted. He looked around at the crowded, noisy place. "Then on to other ships as we find out how much space is avaiable. Most of the transports launching from the surface are past capacity."

"My I have your attention," the Lt. Rhodes voice said just barely above the loud echoing of conversations between the civilians. The acting-XO repeated the demand several more times until the crowd finally hushed and focused their attention on the young officer standing tall on one of the tables.

"Anyone with any of the following areas of expertise, please notify a member of the crew as soon as possible," the Gunny's voice boomed over the crowed. "Previous flight training or experience, prior fleet service, anyone in the medical fields, and those who are good with fabrication units or willing to learn. This is strictly voluntary, but we can use any help we can get to keep this ship repaired and our fighters flying, thank you. Also, we're picking up signals from more refugees. There will be people hurt, so any trained in first aid or trained in counseling, your services are going to be needed."

The Chief turned to the CAG, "Does that sound like the fist stages of conscription to you?"

Captain Miller gave the chief a worried look. He had the same thought. Already half the crew was either cadets or fresh from training. They no longer could be considered green. They were all combat veterans now. Despite this new title of experience, the crew was yet to qualify for the rank of "battle hardened".

"Yes it does," Captain Miller sadly admitted. "Starts with the medical folks, former military, and those able to fill urgent needs. It ends when every last one of them is fulfilling some role."

"Doesn't seem fair. We volunteered for this. Well not for this, but for our service," the Chief said. "Hell half the crew where hear for their three weeks a year to keep their college money. Not to fight a war."

"Having the Cylons pull a sneak attack and nuke our homes wasn't fair either, but it happened. I mean we've fought the enemy, killed the enemy, we're at war," the Miller opened up to the Chief.

"No," the Chief darkly countered. "This wasn't a war. In a war, two sides fight it out. This is now a battle for survival. Anything that doesn't aid in that struggle, I'm afraid, won't be considered."

"The Old Man is better than that," the CAG challenged. "Sounds like we are going to save as many as we can."

"Or the Old Man is ready to die and wants to take as many with him as he can," the Chief said. "I heard that was what the fight was over in CIC. Major stood up the Old Man and lost."

"Well, if the Commander really was hell bent on engaging the Cylons, think we would have run? Think that those kids in CIC wouldn't have joined the XO and stopped him? More over, does the Commander strike you as the type that is willing to fight a loosing battle?" Miller challenged.

The two stood there as the lights suddenly seemed to dim, the luster from the bulkheads was long gone, everything had gone dark in their minds. The question, "what next?" was on everyone's mind, but no one had the answers.

"Where this is life, there is hope," A voice startled them from behind. They turned around to see a short, thin, wrinkled older man with a round face and graying curly hair. He was dressed in the black grab of a Priest. "I must apologize, I couldn't help but over hear what you two were talking about and I thought I'd chime in. After all, the man is asking for counselors and I am a priest. "

"Not at all, Brother?" Miller politely asked.

"Brother Cavil. My name is Brother Cavil," the short older man answered.

"I'm sure we can use all the help we can get, Gods or otherwise," Miller stated.

"Funny," the Old man said.

Miller shook his head, "What?"

"Oh, just the way you phrased your comment. Not a believer in the Gods, are you?" the Priest asked. Miller just stood there not sure how to answer. "Don't worry, son, it's okay. We all arrive at our faiths differently."

"I never said I wasn't religious, but you have to wonder why the Gods would allow something like this to happen," Miller said.

"You two have fun with the philosophy," the Chief dismissed her self and walked back over to help the refugees.

"You say you wonder why the Gods would allow something like this to happen," Brother Cavil started, "Maybe it's not the Gods' fault at all. Ever stop to consider this is really our fault and the Gods had nothing to do with this? After all, it was Man who created the Cylons, not the Gods."

"I suppose so," Miller said, "Although funny…"

"What?" Brother Cavil asked.

"Something like that coming from the mouth of a priest," the CAG said.

"Well, call it the statements of a bitter old cynical man," the priests commented. "Something I've found being a man of the cloth for all these years is that most of the problems of Man are caused by man, not the will of the Gods."

"Amen to that," the CAG agreed.

Belu's Wardroom

"Your stripping our ships!" one of the transport Captains screamed at the Commander in his wardroom.

The Commander's wardroom was simple. It had a single, simple desk, a bookshelf full of reading materials on tactics and history and a large picture of him as a young man with a Mark I Viper in the background. He had that picture enlarged from a photo one of the men took. It served as a reminder of the costs of the First Cylon war. Out of the twenty men and women in the photograph, only two lived through the war. Tragically, the other man who survived died years later in a vehicle accident on Gemenon.

"Yes, I am," the Commander said defiantly. "We are going to need parts, supplies, and let's face it, your transport ships would not last very long against the Cylons. You're safer here on board _Olympia_. I won't mention that they are sub-lights only."

"Safer?" the other Captain countered. "Safer when you begin attacking the Cylons? Safer because what ship will the Cylon's be targeting first?"

The Commander sat in his comfortable high back chair and leaned back. "I have no intention of striking the Cylons. My goal is to get as many people on ships with FTL drives, raid a couple storage depots for parts, supplies, and ammo, and then run."

"Run where?" the second Captain challenged again.

"Somewhere far from the colonies," the Commander stated. "Some place safe, where we can get a fresh start and try to rebuild humanity."

"And just where is a safe place?" the first Captain demanded.

"What about food, medicine, and the civilians?" the second Captain asked. "All those are finite supplies."

"Indeed. That's why we're preparing to jump to several of the resource outposts. So far they've been ignored in the attack. Hopefully we can find a couple mining and refinery ships, maybe even a botanical cruiser," the Commander hoped.

"There is a luxury cruiser out there, with FTL drives. They aren't designed, specifically, as agro vessels, but they have the resources to grow crops," the First Captain said. "I believe the name of the ship is Para-Dice city...like a pair of dice."

The second captain shook his head, "So we can grow crops. There are over two hundred vessels out there. How long until the Cylons begin attacking those outposts?"

"I don't know, that's why a jump prep is already underway. We jump to the first asteroid mine in just under two hours. Which reminds me, I need to get to CIC," the Commander stood up.

"You ever answered our question, what about the civilians from our ships?" the first Captain asked again.

The Commander took a few steps towards the door and stopped. "For now, those willing to help, we'll put to work and find them something to do. If there are other concerns later, we'll deal with them as they come. Good day, gentleman."

The Commander walked out leaving the two Captains alone in the wardroom with just a single Marine standing outside the door.

"What the hell does that mean?" the second captain asked the first.

The older Captain stood there and sighed, "It means we're under the military's thumb now."

CIC

"Jump Complete," the NCO manning the FTL computer announced.

"I have several contacts on DRADIS," the watch officer called out.

The Commander looked up at the DRADIS Console and waited for the unknown contacts to resolve themselves as Colonials or Cylons.

"Stand by to launch alert fighters," Lt. Rhodes commanded.

"Sir, I'm getting Colonial ID's, they are friendly," the watch officer announced. Some clapping and mild cheers broke out in CIC.

The Comm Officer held his headset into place. The signals were jammed, dozens of squawks requesting assistance, others just glad to see a Battlestar. It was a mess of confusion as he sat trying to filter out the signals. "S-s-s-sir, I have the mining base commander on wireless," the comm officer stuttered.

Commander Belu picked up the handset, "This is Olympia actual, go ahead."

"You don't know how glad we are to see you. We've heard reports the entire fleet has been lost," the mining station commander said. He continued expressing the joy to see a Battlestar there to protect them.

"How many mining ships do you have?" Belu asked.

The mining commander paused a moment as he realized the Olympia was not there to protect them.

Belu could almost hear the gulp on the other side.

"How many ships?" Belu repeated.

"We have three mining ships in the area, however only two are capable of FTL jumps. We only have one refinery ship," the commander told Belu.

"Very well, have the crew of the sub-light vessel transferred to the FTL capable ships along with any additional mining equipment they can store. We'll see what we can take on board as well. Transfer as much ore as you can from the sub-light ship to the refinery ship and have them begin processing it into usable materials," Commander Belu ordered. "I want to move in the next ten hours in case the Cylons show up."

"If I may ask Commander, who put you in charge?" the leader of the mining operations challenged. "We're civilians."

"I'm the one with the guns, that's all you need to know," the Commander told him under his breath. "The human race has nearly been wiped out by the Cylons. We are going to need those ships if we are to leave this system and find somewhere else to live."

"Commander," the outpost commander countered knowing he was at the mercy of the Battlestar.

Belu responded instantly with authority, "We have a fleet full of able bodies looking for something to do. You have ten hours to pull up and transfer all the people and supplies you can to the FTL capable ships. Anyone not on an FTL ship at that time gets left behind, Olympia out." Commander Belu switched the handset off before the mining outpost could list any further objections.

Lt. Rhodes stood tall with his hands tucked behind his back watching the DRADIS console. He was waiting. Waiting for what could happen next. Would another civilian ship jump in or would it be the Cylons? Would another Battlestar appear to help give them direction or turn their guns on Olympia for being cowards?

"What is it Mister Rhodes?" the Commander snapped at his acting XO. The uneasiness of the Junior officer had not escaped his notice during all the of the day's events.

"Sir, the Governor of Aquaria is waiting for you in the Wardroom," Rhodes answered. "He's been there for over four hours now, sir, and you said you'd talk with him over two hours ago."

"Right," Belu sighed. He hated politicians. Several had courted him as a possible running mate or other offices if he ever dared retire from the fleet. Always, he kindly refused the offers. It was good to have allies in high places, but Belu hated dealing with people not wearing the uniform. "Now to deal with the griping."

"Sir?" Rhodes questioned.

"I don't know who complains the most about being second class citizens in the Colonies, the Aquarians or the Saggiratons," Belu answered in a much calmer tone the crew was used to hearing.

"At least the Aquarians don't go around blowing up government buildings," Rhodes snickered.

"True," Belu admitted. "Remain at Condition Two. XO you have the conn, I'll be in the wardroom."

Belu's Wardroom

The wardroom was amazingly sparse. There was a U-shaped table that formed a rough trapezoid shape with a raised platform for briefings. Flags of the twelve colonies lined the wall and a large projection screen stood behind a podium on the single riser in the room. The governor's aids wasted no time turning the Wardroom into a make shift office for the Governor. They had already routed several communication lines to various stations, manned by staffers, to communicate with the captains of the fleet.

Commander Belu entered the room flanked by a pair of marines. It was procedure that dictated the marines follow the Commander everywhere and remain on guard at all times during a state of war. One of the many things the Commander was having to get used to under their new conditions.

"Not wasting any time," Belu said seeing what the civilians had done to his Wardroom in just a few hours. The usually sparse and neat room was a mess with papers and dry erase boards on easels.

One tall, portly, man walked towards the Commander wearing a flashy green and white robe that more fit one of the religious fundamentalist from Gemenon than a Aquarian Governor. "You must be the Commander," the Man said. "I am Governor Maxell of Aquaria."

He offered his hand. The Commander just stood there with his chin cocked high in the air as though for official inspection by an Admiral, showing the Governor there would be no deals today. Olympia was Belu's ship, not a tool of the politicians.

Awkwardly the governor retracted his hand and snickered, "I remember seeing this ship being built with a telescope in the back yard when I was a child. Amazing it has survived this disaster."

"It not only survived, but managed to inflict heavy damage on the enemy as well. She may be old, but she has plenty of life still in her," Belu answered with a hint of a grin. This was his first chance to step back and think about the old gal. She had done what she was designed to do: kill Cylons, but the Commander knew well that it was not enough to stop this attack.

"About half the sub-lights have been unloaded. Several more have docked aboard this ship, but I've received several complaints from their captains that their ships are being scrapped and stripped for parts," the Governor said. "What gives you the right under colonial law…"

"Stop right there," Belu raise his hand to the Governor's face. "Let's get something clear right here and right now: I am not going to stand here and justify my actions, but I will humor you just this once...we are going to need spare parts. Sublights aren't going to do the fleet any good. So what are they more valuable as, Cylon sporting targets or spare parts?"

"The Governor nodded, "Very well, I'll have the two salvage ships and the maintenance ship begin doing the same with sub-lights that have landed there," Maxell nodded.

"Good," Belu said dryly. "The bottom-line is this: the Cylon's have attacked and we lost. If we don't get out of here, and soon, we are going to lose everything. This ship, and those with FTL drives out there are going to need parts."

"I see," the Governor said. "So your not planning on staying and fighting?"

"No," Belu admitted, "To do so would be suicide. There are about eighty thousand people in those ships. We are going to use the next few days to jump around, secure supplies from some of the outer depots, and then leave the system."

"And just how many supplies do you think are in those facilities? Enough for us, maybe, but for how long? So far we haven't found any botanical ships and only one luxury cruiser, Para-Dice City. How are we to grow food?" The Governor asked.

"I don't know, but you can figure it out. People are going to need to be organized. You have enough autocrats around here to pull that off," Belu said with a hint of sarcasm. "Do it."

"And what about the military?"

"The Military is my concern. Now we have limited manufacturing capabilities on this ship. I have a recon operation being planned as we speak to jump to the mothball fleet. Once there, we'll see how much we can strip from old battlestars and defenders. I noticed we have four flattops out there in the fleet," Belu said recalling one of the reports.

"Try six," Gina retorted.

"Good, we're going to need them to help salvage parts. They also should have enough machinery to begin small scale production of spare parts. Priority has to be given to making parts for vipers," Belu said.

"And what makes you think that the civilians will listen to you and the military's orders?" the Governor asked. "What if the Flattop commanders think they can make more by trading the parts to other captains for certain items or services?"

Belu gave the man an odd look. Did this man simply not understand that money and the markets no longer mattered? Or was he really that big of an idiot not realize what was going on.

"With all due respect, I don't think money or the markets exist anymore. Last time I checked the reports, a fifty-megaton nuke was detonated over Caprica City, Governor," Belu snapped. "And to answer your question why the fleet will do as I ask is simple: we have the guns and the fighters to protect them. I think they'll understand why that has to be priority. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to get back to CIC."

Belu nodded slightly and walked out of the room. The aids looked at each other wondering what to make of the Commander. This first exchange had not gone well for them. It was clear that the military was in charge and things would remain that was so long as the Commander remained in charge.

Chapter

Belu returned to his quarters exhausted. They had completed their jump to the mining outpost to collect the two mining ships and the refinery ship along with any extra ore and supplies they could haul up in the ten hours he gave the mission. It had been over twenty hours since their engagement with the Cylons and not so much as a single contact since. Something that sat uneasy with Belu, but he'd take the break in the action.

There was a knock on his door. Belu wished the day could be over so he could get at least a couple hours of sleep before reporting for the next shift change allowing Rhodes the chance to get a few hours of rack time.

"Enter," Belu said.

Speaking of the devil, Rhodes entered the room. "I have a report here of near by stars with-in a twenty light-year radius with possible supplies and habitable planets."

"Shouldn't you be in CIC?" Belu questioned.

"Captain Miller has the watch, Sir," Rhodes said.

"Miller?"

"Aye, sir," Lt. Rhodes said. "He volunteered to take a shift so I could get some sleep, sir."

"And shouldn't he be getting some sleep too," Belu shook his head.

"Yes, but he said doc had given him enough stims to stay alert for a month," Rhodes answered him.

"Ah, yeah, that's a problem," the Commander said. "Pilots get addicted to their go pills. Not a good thing. Ever seen a stimm junky?"

"Not really, sir, maybe on the street…"

"Not a pretty sight," the Commander said. "I saw a lot of good people get messed up with those things. They started taking them during the war and never recovered. They'd drink them selves to sleep. Then they'd take the stimms so they didn't have dream."

"Dream, sir?" Rhodes said.

The Commander looked up at the young officer. Belu sighed, "You'll understand soon enough, I'm afraid."

Rhodes gulped.

"When you shut your eyes at night, I suppose you'll see the ghosts of your wife and kids. It's nothing to be ashamed of…I'm haunted every night. Something that too few understand…it's a shame a whole new generation will have to learn to deal with it too," Belu said rather sadly. "I'll read the report when I get on duty. Thanks. Try and get some rest. I have a bad feeling we're not done with the Cylons yet."

Olympia Brig

"So you're the XO," Governor Maxell said entering the brig.

Grant stood to his feet and looked at the oddly dressed man. "Who are you? A priest?"

"Maybe in a former life," the Man said, "No I am the Governor of Aquaria, or at least was, and acting civil administrator for the fleet."

"The Old Man appoint you?"

"Sadly no, but as the highest ranking member of the government…"

"But your not a member of the government, your just a local politician," Grant countered. "The case orange was answered by Laura Roslin."

"I don't see her or Colonial One anywhere around here, kid," Maxell said bitterly, "But I'm not here to debate Colonial procedures. I'm here about the Commander."

"What about the coward?" Grant snickered.

"I think he's a danger, a man bent on control. It is my impression that he intends to rule the fleet as a military dictator," the Governor said.

"Really?" the XO said sardonically. "I'd never have noticed."

"He threw you in the brig why?"

"Because, he refused to obey orders."

"Which were?" the Governor questioned.

"Well, either to assist Ms. Roslin with rescue operations or join Commander Adama at Ragnar for a counter-attack. The Old Man refused both. Instead he jumped to Aquaria and decided to run like a coward. This is a Battlestar, we're suppose to seek out the Cylons and fight them in battle amongst the stars, not run away," Grant jeered.

"Look, kid, what Belu is doing is the smart move. I may not like what he is trying to become, but I respect his decision to run. It's the only smart thing we can do. Every major city on Aquaria had been nuked. I was a winter retreat in the mountains when the attack began, but it was clear we had lost before it even began. Still, Belu is a danger to us," Maxell warned.

"Us?" the XO said.

"Maybe to me, but not to you," Grant said.

"How so?"

"Well, he'll probably have me shot or thrown out of the air lock for mutiny, but the last thing he wants to rule a bunch of ships. All he wants to do is gather supplies and get out of here, run away like the coward he is. As much as he may not like you, he's going to need you and some form of civil government to function," Grant answered.

"Mutiny?"

"Yes, I tried to relieve him of command when he refused to follow orders, as cited by regulations," the Major told this man.

"And if you had been successful?" the Governor asked.

The former XO, now prisoner, sighed, "We'd probably be dead."

"Well thank the Gods you didn't succeed," Maxell said. "So you think the old man will leave the rest of the fleet alone?"

"Yes...so long as he can get supplies and you don't interfere with the military," Grant assured the man.

The Governor nodded, "Thanks for the insight. And he won't space you...I'll make sure of that."

Chapter

The sound of the hatch door opening caught Charmer's attention. He had spent the better part of the last hour trying to read on one of his portable readers of Virgon Philosophy in one hand and a cigarette burning in the other. It was a vein attempt to keep his mind off the past few days. Charmer sat, still in his flight suit, up against a bulkhead pylon that overlooked one of the hanger bay sections. This out of the way place was one of the few refuges he had found on the ship where he could be alone with his thoughts.

After a few moments a leggy, bright red headed, woman appeared. She looked around with a puzzled look on her face. Eventually she walked to one of the open sections looked down at the flurry of activity on the hanger deck below. The Deck Crew were busy welding, tearing down two engines, while others crowded around a Damaged Mark Seven stripping it for whatever was left. Something caught her nose. A familiar smell of Mentha Cigarette smoke…it took her exhausted brain a few moments to process the smell.

Her head whipped around to see Charmer looking up at her with the book now at his side and taking a long drag. "Oh sorry, I'm a tad bit lost, you see I'm…"

"Doctor?" Charmer inquired.

"Yes," the woman answered puzzled. She felt like a stranger in amoung the military family. An intruder into their sacred blood brotherhood.

Charmer pointed out, "The white coat and stethoscope gives it away."

"I suppose it does," the Woman said suddenly feeling the weight of the scope around her neck. She immediately took it off and placed it in the left pocket of her lab coat.

Charmer took another drag of the cigarette and exhaled slowly letting the smoke billow out from him towards the doctor. "Your not military are you?"

"No," the woman answers a little frightened. "I'm sorry, um, I don't know my way around here yet. I was on one of the civilian ships you picked up. They requested people with medical experience to help out, so I stepped foreword. Is this a restricted area?"

"No."

"Oh what a relief," the woman sighed letting her guard down slightly. She looked at his flight suit and insignia. "You a pilot?"

"Yep. Viper and Raptors," Charmer answered.

"So what are you doing here? Shouldn't you be down there helping?"

"Technically I'm on Alert, but I can be down to the hanger deck in less than a minute. I come up here because it's the only place on this frakking ship that I can be alone and has enough light to read."

"Really. I had noticed things were rather dark," the woman commented. She really had not had the time to even notice how the ship was lit. They had been dealing with some mild cases of radiation sickness. Primarily from pilots a little too close to the nuke dets. Fortunately their doses were low enough to be treated with Anti-Radiation meds.

"The CAG thinks there must have been a light bulb shortage when this bucket was built," Charmer smirked.

"CAG?" the Woman questioned.

"Military slang for Commander Air Group, lead pilot: Captain Miller," Charmer answered.

"So your not a CAG?"

"Hell no! I am Lt. Charles Brakov the Third, they call me Charmer."

"Amber," the woman offered in return.

Charmer noticed the woman eying his cigarette. He pulled out his pack and drew two out. "Care for a smoke?"

Amber hesitated, as the debate raged in her mind. Smoking was something she gave up as a wedding present to her husband. She reached down and took one of the cigarettes letting the Lieutenant lit it for her. "Thanks," she offered taking her first drags in five years. She coughed slighted as she felt the return of a familiar comfort.

"Not a smoker?"

"I was, but I gave it up."

Charmer grinned, "Yeah, always surprised me how many doctors and nurses smoked. Always thought you all would be leading the crusade against it."

"I'll leave the moral high ground to the Gemonese."

"Ain't that the truth. I heard a couple of them ranting about the scrolls of Pythia and such nonsense," Charmer said.

"Well," Amber shrugged. "What's the scroll of Pythia again? It's been a few years since temple classes. Never had time to get back in the routine. Figured if we ever had kids..."

"We?" Charmer asked.

"Oh," Amber said pulling out a rather large wedding ring. "I am...or was married," she offered sadly. "Guess that makes me a widow now. It's been one hell of a day, hasn't it?"

"Excuse me?" Charmer questioned.

"I mean with the attack and all. It's been a long twelve, fifteen hours. I hadn't worked emergency triage in years. But as I treating the graven ill, I had one of the medics come and yell at me to treat the minor wounds first. Goes against everything I swore to do as a doctor," Amber said taking another long drag off the cigarette and shaking off the ash.

"Yeah, there's a reason for that," Charmer answered.

"What in the Gods' name could that be?"

Charmer lit his next cigarette making it the third in this chain. "Simple, during combat we need as many people on the line as possible. That one guy with a minor injury can go back out and make the difference between loosing the ship or saving it."

"Really, can't get me mind around that," Amber answered taking a short puff.

"Your from Picon aren't you?"

"Yeah, why?"

"Accent," Charmer answered. "Although you hide it better than most."

"Sorry, when I get…"

"No, no, you don't have to apologize, just saying.," Charmer dismissed. "So what kind of doctor are you?"

"Back on Picon, I had a private practice in a clinic. I was the OB/GYN for a small community, about ten thousand people. My husband was a school teacher," Amber said nervously spinning her ring. "I was on my way back from a conference on Tauron when the attack happened. It's been a bad day."

Charmer gave her the same look as before when she said it had been a bad day for a second time.

"What, did I say something?" the Doctor became defensive.

"You do realize that the attack happened over two days ago right?"

"Two?" the Woman said almost falling over in shock. "No wonder they made me leave."

"Leave?"

"Medical bay, said I needed to get some sleep. I had no idea it'd been two days."

"You mean you've been in the medical bay for the past two days straight?"

"Not straight, got a couple hours of nap time here and there," Amber answered. "Is there anyway you could show me where the civilian sleeping quarters are again?"

Charmer thought about it for a moment. He was not supposed to leave the flight pod on alert. "Sure," Charmer said finishing the last cigarette and stomping it out on the deck. "I can take twenty minutes and do that."

Charmer was careful to mark his spot in the book and put out his cigarette. The last thing he needed was to be caught by Captain Miller and find his ass in the grinder again. Charmer never understood why Miller hated smoking so much. If Miller was Gemonenese, Charmer would have understood, but Miller was from

"This way," Charmer offered. "We'll have to go to Pylon three and take the cross over to four."

"Okay," Amber said not really understanding. The two passed a couple sections full of tired crewmen. "I want to thank you, I'd never find my way around this place. It all looks the same to me."

"Maybe, but the ship is a lot bigger on the outside. Most of the space is taken up by food, water, fuel, and other supplies. Living and work spaces make up less than ten percent of the ship's volume," Charmer quoted.

"Wow, that's lot of space that is nothing...I guess," Amber offered now starting to really feel the effects of lack of sleep. It seemed like residency all over again.

"Not nothing. Our water reserves take up like half the ship. Then there are the ammo magazines and the hanger decks," Charmer said. "It's just people think a ship this size must have tons of space, then get inside and realize how cramp things are. It's a bit of a surprise."

"I bet," Amber politely smiled. She really was not paying attention other than to the signs. She was beginning to notice a pattern. "All the numbers end in odd numbers."

"Yes, that's because we're on the port side of the ship. Everything on the starboard side is even numbered."

"I see, so you can tell what side of the ship your on...clever," Amber remarked.

"Well someone thought so," Chamer mocked.

"Funny, most of the military seem to like their order...you don't seem the type," Amber said playfully.

"I'm not. Only reason I'm here is the Old Man made me. Although he was an Admiral."

Amber stopped, "Your father was an Admiral?"

"Yes, unfortunately...didn't know him much. My mother and him divorced when I was young. Took my stepfather's name. Apparently my mother had it worked out that the Admiral was supposed to pay for my education as long as I wanted to stay in school."

"So how did you end up here?"

"Funny...although the divorce settlement said my Dad had to pay for my education...it never stipulated how...so he signed me up for the Fleet Education fund," Charmer grunted. "Bastard thought it would be good to teach me disicpline and some other feldercalb like that."

"I take it that it didn't work," Amber grinned.

"No. I've been one frak up away from having the uniform ripped right off me for a couple years. Finally, though, I wasn't going to pass grade, so the fleet would not allow me to continue after this enlistment expired."

"That's bad?"

"No, that was good. I got an honorable discharge, full education funding, and the old man couldn't pull any strings to force me to stay in, and i could finish my PhD."

"A doctorate, in what?" Amber asked.

"Philosophy. My step-dad was a university professor...taught advanced math. Funny-thing was he had an undergraduate degree in philosophy and he used to read the books to me as a kid."

"So how did he become a Math Professor?"

"Couldn't get a job with a philosophy degree, so went back and finished his math degree and went on to get a PhD teaching the "theory and philosophy of numbers."" Charmer siad half jokingly.

"Your lying," Amber pouted.

"No, I swear, his big thing was the philosophy of numbers. Is one a number because it's a number or because we assign it some arbitrary value and say that is one?" Charmer asked.

Amber pressed her fingerings against her temples, "Makes my head hurt just listening to the question."

"I thought you were a doctor?"

"Yes, a medical doctor...a specialist in babies. Want to know about after birth, I'm the one to talk too,

"Eww, not really, Doc."

"Doc?"

"Your a doctor, right?"

"Right," Amber said as they began walked down a series of stairwells and finally into a very long and wide corridor with large pressure doors ever twenty paces. "Wow what is this?"

"This is the cross way. It's how we move weapons, people, and fighters between the two flight pods. Provides direct access. Also why there are all these blast doors...prime target of the Cylons, especially since we don't have any defenses down there," Charmer said.

"What do you mean, I thought this is a warship...I mean it's a battlestar, right?"

"Depends who you ask. There are some who would say she's a heavy cruiser with flight pods, not a true battlestar. Olympia's almost twenty percent smaller than the battlestars of her day. So you can imagine how she compares against the titans they are building today," Charmer told her as they walked down the busy corridor.

"A lot of fat good those did us," Amber shook her head. "I know it maybe unpopular around here, but think about how we could have used all that time, money, and resources we spent on those battlestars. Everyone in the colonies could have had healthcare provided. Education at levels would have be free and of excellent quality."

"Or the politicians could have just given it too their friends like they always did. They would have found other pockets to fill with that money," Charmer retorted, "And I doubt it would have been free health care and education for all."

"Well you would have never had to fly a fighter in combat for your money," Amber said.

"No, I suppose not," Charmer agreed. "But I'd be dead right now. So I'll take what I can get."

CIC

"Sit Rep, Mister Rhodes," the Old Man barked as he entered CIC. Rhodes was a wreck; everyone saw the blood shot eyes and puffy bags under the young man's eyes. There had been a few times some of the senior petty officers caught him dazing out into space about tear up. They would always nudge him politely back to duty.

Commander Belu pressed foreword. He needed an acting XO in CIC until Belu decided on a replacement, or Major Grant decided he could swallow his pride and retake his post. Captain Miller found a new job overseeing LSO procedures. Major Grant sitting in the brig was a huge pain, but something Belu was not about to deal with until he was sure they were clear of the Cylons.

"No unknown contacts in twenty-six hours, sir," Rhodes reported. "Not since we left Aquaria with the civilian fleet."

"That's odd," the Old Man admitted publicly. "A hundred thirty ships escape, including four Colonial Defenders and a Battlestar and they don't chase us?" The young kids manning the various duty stations in CIC took a brief moment to glace at each other. The Commander's words and tone were something they did not care to hear.

"Why would it be odd, sir?" Lt. Rhodes answered cautiously. The crew was still skittish after the XO had been relieved of duty and thrown in the brig over a dispute over the Chain of Command after the attack.

"Because, the Cylons know we survived. If they were attacking to wipe out humanity, why let us live?" the Commander posed openly to the crew. No one gave him any suggestions, even though some had ideas, and other had sarcastic remarks.

"M-m-m-maybe be-c-c-cause we're just a single Battlestar," the Petty Officer Stan Forsacan stammered at Communications.

"Or we're not a priority target," Chief Kyle Offered manning the watch station.

"Or because we bloodied their nose," Rhodes suggested.

"Still…" the Old Man countered looking over the communication reports and at the charts on the main plotter. "How goes the search for supplies?" Belu changed the topic.

"Not good. The Raptors report that pirates have already raided stations that weren't guarded and those with probable supplies are being watched by Cylon Raider patrols," Rhodes offered.

"Why so many Raider patrols?" the Watch Officer questioned the acting XO.

"Given their raiders have FTL capabilities….they don't have to deploy their Baseships everywhere," Rhodes suggested.

The Old Man handed Lt. Rhodes a torn, battered, and yellowed piece of paper. "I want you to plan jumps to and from those coordinates. I just got back from Mission Planning. Miller and his team are working on a plan to attack this storage area here," the Commander pointed out the location on the charts. "It currently has five raider squadrons protecting it. However, every six hours half jump away. There is a twenty to twenty-five minute window before the next shift arrives."

"An attack?" Rhodes questioned.

"I don't like it, but we need supplies. Governor Maxell's report shows the fleet only has sixty days of supplies, maybe ninety if we ration. We're not machines, Lieutenant, we are going to need food, water, fuel, parts, and medicine. This supply depot has enough to extend our survival for months."

"But won't that leave the civilians vulnerable," a Cadet manning one of the tactical stations offered. The young woman shied away as the Commander turned to face her.

"The Midshipmen's right," Rhodes offered.

The Commander stood there sternly, "I know. Miller's working on it."

Mission Planning

"We need more recon," Slate insisted for the tenth time in the past nine minutes.

"Our fuel supplies are already at fifty percent. We can't afford to spend half of that on recon and still expect to maintain a regular CAP," Jewels snarled for the second time.

"Knock it off!" Miller yelled bringing the room to a silence. "We've been at this for three hours. Everyone take thirty, take a shower, get some coffee, and come back here with fresh ideas! Dismissed!"

The nine people standing around the table in mission planning broke away as the various cliques of friends gathered to make plans and discuss ideas. Miller looked around as everyone but Jewels left the room. "Something on your mind Lieutenant?"

"Yes, you," she told her superior officer.

That instantly got his attention. "I'm flattered, but reg…"

Lt. Juliana "Jewels" McMillen roller her eyes and grunted in disgust. "Not what I mean, Captain."

"I know," Miller assured her in a more relax mood. He needed the half hour break as much as anyone. "So what can your CAG do for you today?"

"Starting acting like a CAG instead of a flight instructor. Don't get me wrong, you're a hell of an instructor, but mission planning was never one of your strong suits," Jewels said bluntly. "And if you don't some of the veteran reservists with Major lapels are going to start complained even more to the Old Man…and he's going to be hard press to ignore them. After all, fraking with the chain of command during a peace time training mission is one thing, war is a different set of rules."

Miller just stood there speechless. He replied sardonically, "I don't recall giving you permission to speak freely."

"Since when has that ever been a requirement, Sir," Jules shot back crossing her arms and cocking her hips.

Miller stood up and thought about her words for a moment. "You're right, Major Loren probably would make a better CAG. But until the Old Man says otherwise, I'm still in charge and I'll run things my way, Lieutenant."

"It's not that," Jewels quietly assured him. Deep down that was certainly a part of the problem. "Your're a hell of an instructor, better than me, alright. Happy now?" Julianna's words were true and they stung in Miller's ears as he stood there waiting for what he knew would be next. "But, we're at war Captain. This isn't flight sims and training ops. Those are real Cylons we are engaging with real Cylon bullets being shot at us, and real kids dying," Jewels reminded Miller. "Look, all I'm saying is that the time to be everyone's mentor and friend are over. Take charge, that's what they need now."

"I know," Miller anguished. "Which is one reason you're here. The Old Man wants to hit the bone yard. We've done forty hours of surveillance and not so much as a recon drone."

"A little odd, don't you think?" Jewels answered taking a look at the report sitting on the Mission Planning Plotter. "I mean, they seem to be patrolling the rest of the supply depots, why not the bone yard?"

"Probably because most of the equipment of any value had been stripped from the ships before they ended up there," Wilson interjected entering the room. "Old man told me to show up. Maybe I'd be able to answer some of the questions on salvage operations."

"Any help would be good, Chief, but if you need to be fixing vipers," Jewels told the slightly older woman.

"We've got all the Vipers downgraded to the old CNP programs and all combat repairs completed. There are nine vipers down for standard maintenance and two more that were damaged being stripped for parts," Wilson answered. "The Kids can handle that for an hour or two. What do you need to know?"

Jewels looked over at the CAG blankly. She had just been brought in on the planning and had not read all the briefing reports.

"Olympia's two surviving sister ships are at the bone yard, what all do they have left?" Miller asked.

"Not sure, you need to ask Markov and his snipes about that one. I just keep the fighters flying. Keeping the ship running is his territory," Wilson shrugged.

"Specifically flight parts?" Miller asked. "The old man is talking it over with Markov as we speak."

"Well," Jessica thought a moment; "Most of the launch systems were still in place, so we can swipe parts for ours. All of her tooling was placed into vacuum storage."

"Tooling? What kind of tooling?" Jewels asked.

Jessika shrugged not really having an answer. "Well," she hesitated, "There should be a few fabrication units, die kits to make viper parts, things like that."

"As in the ability to build new vipers?" Jewels said impressed.

"Yes, but…" Wilson tried to counter.

"But what?" Miller asked.

"The cheat sheets say the dies are for Mark II Vipers," Wilson told the assembled team. "Not the mark sevens."

"Which is exactly why I'm interested in the tooling," the Old Man said entering the room. "The Mark II's may not be as sleek and sexy as the new Mark Sevens, but they are much easier to build, save for the engines."

Jessika nodded in reply as others grinned sheepishly at the Old Man saying the word sexy. It just did not fit Belu's demeanor, but the entire crew was running on little sleep. Jessika reminded the team, "Not to add insult to injury, but we don't have place to put the fabrication units. They call this ship a baby battlestar for a reason. Hell the starboard flight pod has been taken over by a thousand civilians and taxing our life support system from what I understand."

"Given our severe restrictions on resupply, simple is better," Belu said. "We are going to need to replace our losses. This equipment is our best bet. What I need to know is how long is it going to take us to get that equipment on board?"

"Hours, possibly a couple days," Wilson stated. "I really can't tell you until we get there."

"Prepare a team, chief. They'll take two raptors and scout the targets and report back," the Old Man ordered. "Assign a petty officer you trust, not you Chief. Gunny's already got a detachment of Marines prepping."

"Yes, Sir," Wilson snapped to attention and gave a salute before exiting the room.

The Old Man waited until the door was shut and sealed behind her before looking at the pilots assembled in the room. "I need you all to work on something else." Chapter

"Noble, take Sonja and Thomas and get pressure suits," the Chief insisted strutting on to the Hanger Deck.

"Sir?" Petty Officer Nina Noble questioned putting down parts of a Viper Mark seven fuel pump she was rebuilding.

"You began as a Machinst Mate, right?" the Chief recalled.

"Yes, sir," Noble answered, unsure why the Chief was asking.

"Still know your way around a fabricator?"

"Small one or big one?" Noble asked.

"Big one," Jessika answered.

"Aye, sir. I think I can manage, although the first couple casts may take some trial and error, why? We have a mobile space factory in the Civilian Fleet?" Noble wondered.

"Not yet," the Chief vaguely answered, "But there are over twenty D-Seven-plus Three's sitting in vacuum storage on _Olympus_ at the Bone Yard."

"D-sevens? They were rusting in the corner when I was in shop class in school. No one's used those in like thirty years," Noble protested. "Why."

"Not your place to ask," the Chief reminded Nina. "Your leading a team to see how many are still salvageable and estimate how long it would take to off load the equipment. Also, check out the launch gear. We're going to have to strip those hulks for everything they got left."

"That could take weeks," Nina estimated in her head. "Do have that kind of time?"

"Doesn't matter, your job is to get over there and do the assessment, we'll worry about the details later," the Chief instructed. "Now get Sonja and Thomas, grab EVA gear and get going, you leave in twenty."

"Yes, Sir," Nina said snapping a halfhearted salute and moving off to find her crewmates and tap them for the mission.

Jessika watched the second most senior NCO on the flight deck and shook her head. It was not that she disagreed with Nina about the mission. Wilson's own rough ideas in her head told her they could spend months stripping those ships. Time they did not have as their supplies would be exhausted first.

"Hey, hey, pretty lady," a deep male voice offered antiugisticlly.

The voice immeately caught her attention. It did not belong on her flight deck, it was totally out of place. A bald, bear of a man in a nice suit hovered around one of her young and better looking Deckhands.

"She's a cutie," another dark skinned man offered. The two had boxed in the young woman with her back to a viper.

Specalist Kristen Commons stood was about the same height, only much thinner than the Chief as Jessika had once been at that age.

"Too bad she only got misqutoe bits there," the second man said trying to make a pinching motion for Commons' breasts.

Kristen ducted back into a ball as more of the deck gang began to surround the two men, quietly holding heavy wrenches, screw drivers, piping, anything handy that could be used in hand to hand combat.

"This guy giv'n you problems Commons?" Specialist Hayden remarked. Hayden was built like a Pyramid player. He had played through high school, but never landed a college scholarship and joined the service instead to pay for school.

The two men stood tall, both able to look down at the former jock. "What's it to you," the Bald man asked. "I don't think we asked ya?"

"And who they hell are you two clowns?" the Chief asked walking up behind them. Quickly the deckgang rallied around the Chief to give her support in numbers.

The two men shifted their attention to the Chief. "This one's a little feisty," the Bald man chuckled, "And a little soft around the mid section."

"Just my type," the other man winked at the Chief.

The Chief folded her arms in defince.

"Ensign, you better take a look at this," one of the Specialist tapped Slate on the shoulder.

Kelly stuck her head out the Raptor's open side door and saw the stand off around one of the vipers. The hanger deck was full of civilians. Workers brought aboard to help with menial tasks, like sweeping the deck, fetching supplies. No one had bothered to notice their neatly dressed supervisors. All them were well built men, tall and strong: enforcers.

The enforcers had not noticed the crews in some of the raptors as other pilots, ECO's, and crew began sticking their heads out and looking at each other.

Kelly saw some of the enforcers placing hands behind their suit jackets.

"Oh frack, they got guns," Kelly whispered.

"What?" the specialist said not believing the Ensign until he saw one of the men pull out a small sub-machine gun and hold it behind his back. "Oh frak, your right!"

Kelly was already into the survival kits retrieving the two pistols and carbines and handing them to the others around here. They peaked out again as other Raptor crews began to mark targets with their carbines.

"What do we do, Ensign?" another of the deck gang trembled holding a pistol awkwardly.

"You ever even shot one of those things?" Ensign Slate asked. He shook his head no. "Ever shot one of these," Kelly asked pointing to the carbine. The enlisted man nodded yes. "Trade." Kellly offered the carbine and grabbed the pistol. The safety was still locked into place. She flipped the safety down and pulled back the slide loading the first round into the chamber.

"Who the hell are you people and what are you doing on my hanger deck?" Wilson demanded feeling comfortable with her crew rallied behind her in support.

"This bitch things she owns the place," the Bald man said to his pals laughing. It got a chuckle from some of the other enforcers as well as they moved to flank the deck gang.

"I am the Chief of the Deck and I'm going to have to ask you all to leave," Wilson insisted still in a cool, calm voice.

"Listen chief, we ain't military, and even if we were, we wouldn't be following orders from you," the Dark man offered.

"This is a military vessel. Here rank rules, not attidtude.," Wilson smugly remarked adding slightly under her breathe, "Unless your pilot…but different breed…" She had hoped the attempt at humor would ease tensions, but the room grew heavier with anticpation.

"Well that's too bad, this is our deck now. In case you didn't notice, we got you at a little disadvantage," the Bald man growled.

"Chief, look out!" one of her specialists said seeing the red dot on the back her neck. He quickly grabbed her and flung the Chief to the deck as the first shots rang out. The quick burst of gunfire into the deck gang was devastating has over half went down as the enforcers emptied their clips into the crowd. Some of the deck crew managed to strike back at the enforcers as a new flurry of gun shots came from the Raptors followed.

The firefight was intense as the Alert Klaxon began blaring. Slate knew it wouldn't be long before the Marines showed up to contain things, but until then she was pinned outside behind the wing of the Raptor. Bullets were richotcing wildly around.

"All this gun fire can't be good," the Specialist remarked to Slate using the Raptor's engines for protection. He leaned around the corners every few seconds to fire off two or three rounds at a target he had picked out. So far none seemed to hit their mark.

"No," Slate said rolling around and taking careful aim and squeezing the trigger three times. One of the shots struck on of the enforcers in the gut. Good enough to take the man out of the fight and make his death a long and painful one. "Especially considering the fuel lines and ammo."

The sound of gunfire echoed even into the pilot's ready room. Miller raced into the Pilot's Mess and yelled, "Deck gang just got ambushed by a bunch of thugs, they need help!"

The on duty pilots reached for their side arms and raced towards the doors to the Hanger Deck just as the Alert Klaxon began screeching. The others were heading for the pilot's small arms locker to get weapons and join the fight.

Armed Pilots and Marines flooded he hanger deck as the shooting continued for a few more moments with more casualties on all sides as the confusion began to settle down. Most of the enforcers were dead and others wounded as the Marines ordered everyone to drop their weapons including the other Colonial officers and crew. Anyone not lowering a weapon to the ground was shot.

"What the hell just happened?" the Old Man grumbled as he stormed into the Medical bay under heavy Marine Escort. The amount of wounded and dead in the room took even the battle hardened Commander by surprise. In all his years of service he never though that he would repelling a civilian boarding party.

"I don't know, sir. All I saw were the deck gang being surrounded by these goons," Slate pointed to one of the tall men in a dark suit bleeding onto the deck. "So we grabbed the weapons from the survival kits and shot them when they opened fire."

"They had weapons?" the Old Man asked.

"Sure did, Commander," Miller chimed in. I saw them pull out several small machine pistols. I ran to scramble the pilots." Miller turned to Slate, "How bad?"

"Three bullets, none life threatening. Doctors said they'd get to me when they got to me, just first aid crap right now," Slate said as the bandages were nearly soaked through. She turned and glared at one of the Marines, "No thanks to our sharp shooting marines."

"They did tell you to drop the weapon," Miller countered.

"Thanks for the support. Hell of a CAG," Slate snapped.

Miller turned around, "Be thankful your delirious from blood loss Ensign."

"And if I'm not what are you going to do, revoke my flight status for six weeks?"

"Six weeks, more like three months," Amber said grabbing the Ensign's x-rays. "Your tibula is snapped like a twig and the thigh is going to take time to heal."

"What about getting the bullets out, I'm starting to feel it a bit," Slate grumbled.

"We should have an OR open in twenty minutes," Amber said.

"Hang in there," Miller encouraged as he followed the Old Man around.

"What's the report?" Commander Belu asked a tall black man wearing a lab coat.

Simon looked down at the Commander, "Twenty-two civilians and eight crew dead. Sixteen wounded."

"Civilian or crew?"

"Both," Simon answered. "You'll have to excuse me, I need to prep for surgery."

"Of course," Belu nodded. He ruled every compartment on the ship except Medical. There the doctors were in charge and the Commander was more than comfortable leaving it that way.

Miller gulped as he saw the wounded around him, "So is this why we ran, Sir? So we could just start shooting at each other?"

The comment gave Belu a moment of pause. The CAG was right. Why was the point if in three days they had gone back to bickering amongst themselves? "I think we have bigger problems than that."

"You heard the rumors too," the CAG asked in defeat.

The Commander turned to his CAG and growled, "What rumors?"

Miller gulped, "Scuttlebutt is that the governor of Aquaria was one of the most corrupt in the colonies. It's practically common knowledge that his campaign had close ties with the Unions."

"Which means they had ties to the Mob," Belu sighed. "I know, all too well," the Commander admitted to his CAG. "Captain, I want you to look at all civilian fleet movement in the past two days."

Miller looked at the Commander blankly for a few moments. "Aye, sir," the CAG replied.

"Jump complete," Jockey informed the rest of the team in his Raptor. He looked around at the seventeen old Battlestars in various stages of being stripped. All had their plating removed showing their exposed ribbed construction. The two Olympus class vessels stood out as they still had most of their plating still in place. "Any contacts?"

"Negative, sir," the ECO reported. "Nothing but big ass battlestars."

"Good, where is the Olympus?" Jockey asked.

"One to port side, sir," the ECO informed the pilot.

"Let's go," Jockey replied as he kicked in the thrust towards the large hulk.

The ECO watched the returns on his sensors. Something was troubling him. "That's odd," he commented double checking the returns.

"Define odd, please," Jockey requested. "I don't like odd."

"Sir, we're being lit up by Driadis. Powerful signal," the ECO warned.

"Spinning up FTL," Jockey said flipping some switches to ready the standby coordinates. "Recon Two and Three, we're getting some odd readings, spin up FTL, we're getting out of here with the first sign of trouble."

"Sir, the signal gear is identifying the Draidis signal as Colonial Military. It's coming from one of the Battlestars," the ECO stated.

"Locking on to the signal, thusting," Jockey said spinning the ship's nose towards the signal. "Holy Frak!" Jockey yelled as the windscreen filled with the bow of a Battlestar. "A Mercury Class."

"I'm reading multiple contacts, getting Colonial-Id's as Vipers," the ECO warned. "Challenge codes match, sir…that is the Mercury."

Jockey toggled the communications gear for ship to ship, "Attention Mercury, this is Raptor Two-One-Nine, transmitting authorization codes now."

They sat there waiting several moments.

"Sir, another ship just jumped in…I'm getting Colonial ID, reading the ship as the _Ajax_, sir," the ECO reported. Alerts sounded again. "Six more signals…Colonial Defenders, sir, it's a fraking fleet!"

"Maybe, any reply to our challenge and ID?" Jockey questioned with one hand on the jump controls as a pair of vipers made a quick pass off their nose.

"Attention unidentified Raptors, follow escorts to Port Side flight pod," a Voice stuttered over the wireless. "Reply or you will be fired upon."

"This is Olympia Recon One, will comply, over," Jockey said waving his wings to the escorts. The Mark Seven Vipers kept in the Raptor's kill slots all the way until they landed on the elevators of the Mercury.

"Everything looks prestine and new compared to the Olympia, eh Jockey?" the ECO remarked sticking his head up into the cockpit area.

"Yeah," Jockey admitted as a tractor latched on and dragged their ship into a hanger bay filled with dozens of heavily armed Marines.

"Attention crews of the Raptors, come out with your hands up and no weapons," the stuttering voice demanded.

"Sir,?" the ECO asked.

"We're all friendlies," Jockey shrugged. "Do as they say." The crew and Marines unloaded their weapons and left them on the deck of the Raptor as they opened the side hatch to the Raptor and walked out with their hands in the air.

They were immediately grabbed, thrown to the deck, and searched by the Mercury's Marines.

"Hey, watch it!" Jockey insisted has he heard his wrist pop as he hit the deck. "We're all Colonial Military here."

"Can't be too careful these days," one of the Marines blasted. "Clear," the Marine said pulling the Raptor pilot back to his feet as one of the Officer's approached.

"I'm Major Davies, XO of the Mercury. Please follow these men to debriefing."

"Major, doesn't a Cornel normally get the second in Command Duties on a front line ship?" Jockey questioned.

"Cornel Mitchell was the XO until yesterday when he assumed command of Ajax," the Man said as the Ape like Marines drug the Raptor Crews off the deck.

"Where are we being taken?" Jockey demanded.

The Major turned around and answered just before they were off the Hanger deck, "To a secure holding area."

"Why, we're fraking Colonial Miltary officers!"

"As the Marine said, we just can't take that chance right now," the Major answered.

"Sir," the CAG said walking into CIC. The Marines were visablly present at all stations and in full combat gear ready for a fight at any moment. It was a situation that Miller hated to be around, but given what he had figured out he was glad to see the Marines. "We have a big problem."

"Add it to the list," Belu snapped.

"Sir?"

"We have a lot of big problems. What is this one?" Belu said sliding back into is new normal tone of voice.

"In the last two days, the civilian administration has been busy moving people around. Some of the traffic has been encrypted," the CAG answered.

"Encrypted?" Lt. Rhodes questioned. "Why would the Civilians need to encrypt data traffic?"

"They don't want us to read it," the Commander said.

"The Spooks are having a field day, but the encoding is not military. In fact, according to a couple of the Spooks, this encryption code is one of the best on the market. It's going to take them a few days to break it at best," Miller reported. The Commander took off his gold rimmed glasses and flung them onto the main plotter at Command and Control. "While we can't decode what they are saying, we do know where the transmissions are going to and how long they are."

"And that helps us how?" Rhodes asked.

"We know their communications hubs," the Commander suggested. "So, best guess?"

"If the rumors are true, looks like the Aquarian mob got off the planet and I am willing to bet that those transports that lifted off were full of their cronies," Miller suggested hating the idea himself. "If that's the case, they've managed to infiltrate at least two-thirds of the fleet."

"Lt. Rhodes, I want civilian ship to ship traffic halted immeaately. Launch the reserve vipers. Any shuttle or transport not heading back to their ship of origin is to be given a warning shot across their bow. If they ignore the warning, Vipers have weapons free," the Commander ordered.

"I'd better get back down to flight," Miller said offering a short salute before exiting the CIC under the careful eyes of the Marines.

"The Agro ships, Mining ships, refinery ship," Rhodes read off the list compiled by the CAG, "All of the Flattops…this isn't good."

"No it's not!" Belu said slamming his fist into the plotter. "There were encrypted databusts between ships and nobody here picked up on it?



Chapter

"Raptors report that Ragnar is empty. Looks like the Galactica managed to get there and take just about everything," Jockey reported looking down at the list from his recon mission. "Warheads, computers, spare parts, the works. Nothing left but some wreckage and two boxes of food and water/"

"Two boxes of food and water?" Major Loren grimaced, "That's something odd to leave behind."

"May have forgotten it in the rush," Major Miller said now happy to be the same rank as Loren as well as the new XO.

"And you can bet there are some basestars not too far away," Commander Belu added.

The room was hot, stuffy, and damp. Unusually muggy for a starship, but with the extra twelve hundred civilian bodies on board, the life support systems were at their limit. The heat only added to the pressure cooker of the situation. For three days, Miller and a handful of pilots had been trying to figure out a way raid one of the last remaining Colonial supply depots. Every Raptor recon patrol yielded the same results: contact with a Cylon fighter patrol in the area.

"Which," Miller begrudgingly admitted, "Leads right back to the beginning."

"We have no way to actually resupply without risking the ship," Major Loren, the new CAG, reported. "That's too big of a risk."

Commander Belu looked over the mission planning plotter one more time. "What about the other coordinates I gave you?" the Commander directed at Jockey.

Jockey looked over the paperwork, "Two of the Raptors failed to locate the targets. Two more reported the space depots had been raided and Stawberry Five hasn't reported back yet, Sir."

"Twenty-five years of drifting in space tends to do that," Belu sighed.

"So much for secret depots. Chances are pirates got to them years ago," Miller said.

"Lt. Rhodes is working on a formula to see if he can't narrow down where those other two depots might have drifted to..." Jockey began.

"No," Belu interrupted shaking his head. "We can't waste any more aviation fuel on searching for supplies. We only have enough food and water for three more weeks," Belu reminded his staff. "Plus our fuel reserves are down a third."

The young officer corps just looked at each other exhausted. Not only from the constant war footing, but exhausted on ideas. For days they had been going over plans and then war gaming out solutions.

"The simulations showed our best bet would be to attack station Deacon Two Four with the Olympia and send the Defenders with the civilian transports and half our fighters to Upsilon Nine-Seven," Miller offered with a final determination in his voice.

"I agree, that was the best plan in the sims," Loren reluctantly seconded. "But, if we lose...it's over. We lose and humanity's dead, Sir."

"And if we don't try, we die slowly of starvation...no, I won't let it come to that. We do this, thirty hours ladies and gentleman," Belu told his crew. "Take half the vipers and redeploy to the flattop and Defenders."

Everyone looked at each other. For two weeks the Olympia and her eighty civilian ships in tow had managed to escape Cylon detection, but the reality was starting to set in. With no Agro ships, the ability to grow new food was not enough to feed the population. Even at half rations, the fleet would last just weeks and they knew even if the raid proved to be successful, it only postponed the inevitable by a few months at most.

Belu firmly ordered, "Loren, get on the redeployments. Major, wait a moment." The others exited the room slowly and somberly. They all knew that this was a gamble, something the Old Man was not known for and only underscored their desperation.

"You wanted something, sir?" Miller said still adjusting to his new role as XO. It had been a smoother transition than he had thought, but still it was an adjustment being busted from CAG from lead flight instructor and then to XO in a matter of hours.

"That piece of a paper I gave you," Belu asked. Miller grabbed it from his pocket and pulled it off enough to let the Commander know that the XO kept it with him at all times. "If we fail..."

"We won't fail, Sir," Miller interrupted.

"If we fail," the Old Man continued, "I want you to evac most of the crew to the defenders and civilian ships. If we fail I want you on an Evac Raptor and you are to jump to back to the fleet and have them jump there."

"What is so important about this spot?"

"You'll find help there."

"Sir, permission..."

"The Battlestars Mercury, Ajax, and Atlas and their support ships will regroup there, if any survived. We know that the Mercury and Atlas are unaccounted for in the reports from the battle," Belu finally told the XO.

"Then why haven't we..."

"Because," Belu said. "They are to wait three weeks, regroup, and then begin a counter attack. It was a pact I made with their commanders twenty years ago. We saw this coming..."

"Sir," Miller said puzzled, "Care..."

"No I don't," Belu admitted in a soft somber tone. "At anytime you feel during the battle that we will not prevail, your orders are to leave CIC and head for the evac raptor. Don't even ask, just go. Do you understand me?"

Miller nodded, "Aye, sir, and assume we reach those coordinates and there are colonial ships standing by, what I am supposed to tell them?"

"That the Old Man and this crew fought until the last," Belu said.

Hanger Deck

"Chief," Major Miller said behind Wilson.

Chief Petty Officer Jessika Wilson jumped and turned around. "Sir," she offered a salute. Miller returned the salute as the two just stood there in silence.

"You have your orders?" Miller asked.

Jessika nodded, "Yes, sir. Going to The Grim Ann."

"The Grim Ann," Miller shot the Chief an odd look.

"Yes, sir, the flatop...civilian ship, sir. They've volunteered to house two viper squadrons while we're away," Jessika said pausing a moment, "While your away, sorry sir."

"No need to apologize, Chief," Major Miller smiled. The pair stood there for another awkquard moment before the Chief took a step foreward.

"So...um..."

"Yeah," Miller offered awkwardly, "Um...look..." he said unable to look the chief in the eyes. INstead he focused on the ceiling of the hanger deck. "All the years you fixed my Vipers kept them in the air...Thanks Chief. You ran one hell of a show here on Hanger Deck Three."

Jessika took another step foreword and looked around to make sure none of the young enlisted kids over heard them and whispered to the XO, "Not planning to make it back."

"We'll be back," Miller insisted.

"Cut the crap..."

Miller look down at the deck marking every last grease stain and pot mark in his mind before slowly shaking his head. "Belu's already got it set in his mind. This is a one way trip. We'll try and buy as much time as we can, but no guarantee."

"You know about the back up coordinates?" Wilson asked.

Miller was surprised she knew as he lifted the paper from his pocket.

"Good. I'll see you there, Major."

"See you there, Chief."

Officer's Quarters

"So you leaving too Frills," Slate asked her rank mate as Frills finished her last duffel bag.

"Yeah, I guess they want a couple of us Raptor jockeys to stay behind and escort the main strike group. Lucky me," Frills said taking down her rack curtain that she had added a frilly lace to around the edges. The other six pilots had already packed their bags and shipped out to their new assignments in the fleet. "A lot of packing for a temporary assignment."

"I don't think it's temporary," Slate said dealing out cards to herself at the small table.

"You volunteered to stay behind, why?"

Slate shrugged, "Loren's staying. Someone's has to look out for him."

"Is he really your brother-in-law?"

"Yep," Slate sighed.

"I guess technically not anymore...I mean," Frills gulped. "Sorry...it just all seems like it was so far away."

"I know," Slate said. "Still feels like a regular deployment and that in a few more weeks I'll get off at Scorpion and see my family waiting at the docks. Jill and Vern will lock themselves in a room a frak for a week and we'll be happy."

"So, since he's no...longer..."

"My sister and niece maybe dead, but he's still family...in-law or not," Slate offered. "At least the closest to real family we got left."

"Fair enough," Frills nodded. She could understand the feeling. The crew had come together in the last two weeks. Even before the was already a sense that the crew of a Battlestar was a kind of family, albeit a dysfunctional one. Frills slung the bags over her shoulder and headed for the door. The CAG was standing in the open door.

"Oops," Loren said stepping out the way. "After you Lieutenant."

"Thank you, Sir," Frills said in passing.

Major Vern "Stubby" Loren stepped into the now empty room. "Finally got your own quarters I see."

"Guess so..." Slate replied looking around depressed at having to watch the rest of her bunkmates leave. They all knew what was being asked and chose to try and protect the civilians instead of participating in the suicide mission.

Loren shook his head, "You shouldn't be here Kelly."

"Now it's Kelly," Slate mocked.

"I'm here as your brother-in-law...I guess still..." Loren admitted. The two had talked a lot in the past few weeks, mainly trying to remember the good times.

"Close enough," Slate said.

"If something happened to you, your sister would never forgive me. In this life or the next," Loren said sitting down across from Slate.

"She'd never forgive me if I let something happen to you," Slate returned. "So looks like we're in this thing together."

"I don't know why no one thinks we're coming back from this..."

"You saw the simulations. We lasted forty minutes tops before a dozen Baseships showed up and finished us off," Slate said. "We all know this is a one way trip. If the Cylons destroy us, they may leave the civilians alone. After all we're the only ship they know about."

"What about the intel reports. They can't account for five Battlestars," Loren said trying to stay positive.

Slate dropped the cards on the table, "Doesn't mean the survived, just means we can't be for sure what happened to them. Even then, if they ran like we did, they could be anywhere. Do you have any idea what the odds are like that we'd run into another Battlestar that survived..."

Loren sucked in a deep breath and let it go slowly. "Well, pre-flight is in four hours."

"I know," Slate said. "I should get some rack time, but..."

"Neither can I," Loren admitted. "So why don't you dole out the cards."

"Only if you want to lose," Slate cocked her head.

Brig

"Today's your luck day Major," Major Miller told the former XO still locked up in the brig for attempted mutanty.

"What, the Old Man finally grow a set and decide to throw me out the airlock?" Major Grant replied bitterly.

Miller shook his head, "Come on, why are being like this...for two weeks all you've done is whine in here. Hell even Charmer got tired of listening to it."

"The Old Man disobeyed a direct order. Under Colonial Fleet regulations I was right and proper to relieve the Commander of his command," Grant protest.

"Yeah, yea, tell it to someone who gives a frak. What good would it have done us to have jumped to virgon or Ragnar?"

"What good has it done us to jump away with the civilians only to attempt a one way mission to try and save a few thousand refugees, which you and I both know aren't going to last long out here," Grant replied.

"You know, all you had to have said to the Commander was you were sorry..."

"But the thing is...I'm not. I know the Old Man liked to run a loose command, and I could tolerate it, but in war...no..."

Miller snarled at his slightly older counterpart, "Maybe your right. Maybe old man should have spaced you when he had the chance. But he didn't. This is your last chance."

Miller grabbed the keys and opened the cell door. "Last Raptor leaves in ten minutes. Here your frakking crap we packed now get the hell off this ship."

"Your the XO," Grant snapped back taking the bag and heading under Marine escort to the hanger deck.

Belu walked through the corridors, slowly, noting every detail of his ship. The Olympia was at a reduced strength with all the civilians placed on other ships and most of her flight crew transferred off ship along with a quarter of the fleet regulars transferred to the four Colonial Defenders. All the crew that stayed behind volunteered. The fact it was volunteer meant everyone knew it was a one way trip. A desperate attempt to buy time so the rest of the fleet, the rest of humanity could make a run for survival.

"All decks report at Condition One, Action stations manned and ready for Combat jump. Latest intel puts two Cylon Basestars at the target," Miller showed the Commander on the main plotter. "Somehow, I get the feeling they'll be shooting back this time," Miller said ominously.

"Last time we caught them with their pants down...this time they'll be ready. Launch tube status?" Belu called over to the watch station.

Lt. Rhodes doubled checked and then slowly turned around, "All fighter launch tubes loaded and hot."

"Guns?"

Rhodes replied, "All batteries manned and ready to acquire targets on the other side, Sir."

"Evac Raptor?"

"Standing by."

"Nukes?"

"Four left and armed in their missile tubes," Rhodes reported.

Belu took a moment as silence befell the CIC. He looked at each one of the frightened, young faces around him. "The fleet sent us out as cast offs, and rooks. No one would have given us a change, but your service these past few weeks has been beyond words. You've pulled off merciless and..." Belu took a moment to steady himself, "It's been an honor."

The swooshing of the dradis console was the only sound as the crew looked around at each other trying to find the rock. Belu had lost the edge and the crew knew it. This was a one way trip. The Old Man had no intention of them living through this one.

Chief Kyle stepped foreword. "Sir," he spoke up, "On behalf of the crew..." A tear began to form as his lip trembled.

Belu nodded and turned over to Rhodes, who was staring off with a glazed look over his face. "Mister Rhodes, start the clock."

Rhodes took a moment to recover from the thoughts of his wife and kids he would be soon joining with the Gods. "Aye, sir. FTL, go!"

"Clock is running, sixty seconds," the crewman offered. The crew tried to look busy triple and quadruple checking all their settings in the eternity it seemed to take the countdown to reach zero.

Space and time contracted as the ship jumped to its new point in space.

"Jump complete, bow batteries have first two salvos away at Basestar Sierra One," Rhodes reported. "We have incoming ordinance, radiological alarms!"

Miller grabbed the nearest handset and flipped the 1MC, "Launch all fighters, repeat launch all fighters!" He gently replaced the handset as the first set of impacts against the hull almost sent him to the ground. It was the first time he had ever felt a weapons impact. With all the shaking and vibration he was surprised they were still in one piece. He looked around. The crew seemed to take in stride, busy watching their posts, and the Commander had loosened his knees to help absorb the sudden jolts as the ship was rocked by another impact.

"Two nuclear detonations, aft section, port sub-light down," Miller reported looking at the damage control panel built into the main plotter at command and control. "Damage Control teams standing by."

"Sir, Basestar Sierra One is moving off, they're running, but still launching raiders. Sierra Two launching raiders and moving to our ventral side," Rhodes reported.

"We don't have any guns down there," Belu remarked to himself. Indeed the Cylons were prepared this time and specifically to deal with this ship. They knew its weaknesses and were moving to exploit them. "Roll the ship, keep it in our Main and Primary firing arcs!"

"Maneuvering reports half of the starboard thrusters are not responding," Chief Kyle said with the handset smug against his ear. "Damage Control says it will be several minutes to get those back online. Our roll rate is only a quarter degree per second!"

"They get us on our blind half, we won't last long," Belu remarked to this XO.

Miller fought the urge to run. He knew there was a Raptor standing by just for him, but he elected to stay at his post as long as possible.

"Three more Nuke dets to port. FTL one is down," Rhodes reported. "FTL two is iffy."

"Mister Kyle, tell the DC parties to concentrate on the FTL drives. They both go down and this thing is over."

Slate sat back in the seat of her viper. "We're going to see this through," she said to her fighter as though it was a real living creature. "I know you are."

"You really think that's going to help?" Charmer's voice said.

"What?" Slate said in to mic not realizing she had her comm key set to wingman. "Sorry."

"Not a problem, but it's a machine, not a pet," Charmer quipped.

Slate looked over at the launch officer fielding her a long salute. Slate looked over and smiled with her reply as she assumed launch position. She exhaled just as the catapult kicked in flinging her viper out the side and towards the aft of the Olympia.

The first incoming conventional Clyon warheads were impacting against the hull as she counted to three in her head and then kicked in the RCS thrusters to form up with the rest of the four ship group she was commanding. "Watch your intervals," she said to the three Cadets flying Vipers for the first time in combat. "Remember your training. Don't fly in a straight line, vary your vectors and acceleration, and you'll do fine."

"Red Group, move to intercept incoming raiders from Sierra One. All other fighters, on my wing, prepare to engage the raiders from Sierra Two," Loren told all his pilots. This was his second combat mission. The first one had used up what luck they might have had left. Deep inside he had a feeling this one would not be as kind.

Before the group could make formation, three vipers had been toasted by Cylon missiles. "Fraking, missiles, Jockey can't you get us any support!" Loren yelled at the lone Raptor launched to provide electronic warfare support.

"Trying," Jockey reported back, "Attempting to jam as many incoming warheads as we can, but that last nuke took out some our gear."

CIC

"Sir, permission to launch nukes," Rhodes requested.

"Not yet," Belu ordered as the ship shook repeatedly. "Status FTL?"

Kyle looked over the DC board, "FTL one still down. Two keeps flickering."

"Stay on that FTL drive," Belu barked.

"Aye, sir, we have as many DC parties as we can working on it," Kyle reported back.

"Sierra two just left the primary firing arc," Miller said. "The Mains will only have solution for another twenty seconds."

"Get on the wireless, tell our fighters to take up defensive positions along our belly," Belu screeched.

Miller grabbed the handset, "Stubby, Aten, break engagement and redeploy to intercept incoming ordinance from Sierra Two."

Deep Space

Stubby keyed the reply button, "Copy that, we'll protect your gut. Blue Group, Green Group, break off and assume defensive positions around Olympia. Gold Group and Red Group, continue providing fighter screen."

Another flash caught the corner of his eye. Another Viper incinerated by a cylon missile. This time the Basestar was launching every tube it had at the Colonials. He yawed around and lined up the shot and squeezed off a burst killing one raider and damaging a second as it flew past his cockpit just feet away.

He quickly followed the raider with his head uttering to himself, "That was a little too up close and personal."

CIC

"Four...Five...Six..." Slate's voice kept count of her kills over the speaker. "Line 'em up and knock 'em down," She screamed in to her mic. "Seven..." And then static as the communications officer waited a few moments before switching to another frequency.

Miller took a moment to look up and try and locate her viper in the swarm, but it was gone. He let out a quick sigh before refocusing his attention on the damage reports. "Sir, the other Sub-light engine has a coolant leak. The back up system has kicked in, but the temperatures down there are getting close to the red."

"Major, what's the situation on the sublights?" Belu yelled over to damage control.

Miller shook his head, "I can't get Markov on the line, Sir. Nobody seems to know what happened to him or DC party fifteen." Miller was handed a series of reports from one of the crew woman. His eyes glanced over the reports, "Sir we have structural damage from that last nuke in sections aft of forty including explosive decompressions on decks seven and nineteen. Seven forty-two is Aft Damage control..."

Markov and his team were dead manning their station in Aft Damage control. Miller wondered silently to himself how many more standing around him would not see tomorrow.

"Sirs, we got Raiders baring down on the flight pods. Looks like they are making suicide runs!" Rhodes reported.

"Shut the blast doors!" Belu ordered.

"If we shut the blast doors we won't be able to recover fighters," Miller objected.

"Shut them now!" Belu glared at Rhodes.

"Yes, sir, shutting flight pod blast doors," Rhodes replied slapping a few switches. "Radiological alarms on those Raiders."

"They got nukes. They'll get inside the flight pod and detonate them. The pressure causes the pods to pop like a bottle," Belu remarked quietly to his new XO. It was a tactic the Cylons had used successfully in the first Cylon war. The secure flight pods was a feature added to the Olympia and her sister ships even though the trade off was the narrow landing slits.

"Landing bays secured, impact in five...four...three..two...one!" Rhodes counted down. The Olympia did not even shutter as the six Raiders impacted harmlessly against the hull. "No nuke dets. The raiders impacted against the blast doors."

Miller was handed a quick update, "Reports of severe buckling in the bow side of the port landing bay. The blast doors are jammed shut."

The ship shook again and quickly followed by a massive detonation that flung several crewmembers including the Commander to the ground hard. Miller hit the side of the plotter knocking the wind out of him as he collapsed to the ground.

The Marines and medical crew quickly responded, helping the commander back to his feet. He looked down as Miller gasped for breathe. "What the hell was that!" Belu shouted at Kyle.

"Secondary explosion, pylon four..." Chief Petty Officer Damon Kyle listened to the reports. "Sir, support strut four is reading hard vacuum."

"Flight, have one of the vipers make a visual pass at the support strut," Belu ordered.

"Sir, we're taking a pounding," Miller said brushing off the medical personnel, but still trying to catch his breathe. "We should go while we still have FTL."

Belu looked up at the count up timer. "No, it's only been eleven minutes. That's not enough time."

"Sirs, if we're going to evacuate the port flight pod..." Kyle reminded the pair.

"No," Belu growled, "Order those people to remain at their posts. Roll the ship, counter clockwise!"

"Counter clockwise, won't that put the flight pod in the line of fire?" Miller objected.

"Also forces the Basestar into our primary firing arc," Belu replied.

"Right," Miller nodded. Not a move he agreed with, but he passed along the commands.

"What about our nukes?" Rhodes asked again.

"Prepare to launch nukes one and two on Sierra two," Belu ordered. "Fire when ready. Set port secondary to staggered fire cycle deacon."

Loren maneuvered his nose on to the kill slot of another raider and squeezed the trigger. The word "ammo" lit up read in his HUD. "Oh frak me," Major Stubby Loren cried out as the Raider continued to close. A stream of red tracer rounds flew between his nose and the raider as the Cylon exploded in a short fireball with only small debris impacting against the side of his fighter.

"Fraking toasters," Charmer called out to the CAG.

Stubby squinted and noticed the tail section of his viper was missing. "Thanks," Stubby answered wondering why Charmer just now got his act together. Charmer was the second highest scoring ace in the first engagement just behind slate with eleven confirmed kills. Loren keyed to contact the Olympia, "Olympia, stubby, we're running out of ammo, request immediate combat landings."

CIC

"S-s-s-s-ir," the Communications stuttered, "S-s-stuby reports nil ammo, requests permission to land."

"Negative. They can stay out there and keep the Cylons occupied," Belu commanded. The communications officer relayed the command to a reply from stubby that the Comm Officer not dare repeat to the Commander.

"Major Loren c-c-c-cop-copies the order," Stuttering Stan replied.

"New dradis contacts!" Rhodes shouted. "Three...no strike that, five enemy baseships just jumped into the area."

"FTL" Belu looked over at Kyle. The old salty chief shook his head. Belu closed his eyes and accepted their fate. He braced himself against the main plotter and looked down at the mini-damage control screen splitting the two halves of command and control. Most of the board was flashing red on both sides of the ship. He looked up at the sound of the pressure door slamming against the bulkhead. Major Miller had kept his work and made a mad dash for the Evac Raptor. "Mister Rhodes, open the port aft blastdoor."

"Port side aft?" Rhodes question.

"You heard me!"

"Yes, sir," Rhodes said fining and flipping the switch.

"Take the XO's post," Belu instructed Rhodes.

Rhodes looked around, Miller was missing as though he had vanished. The Lieutenant did not even see him leave. Lt. Rhodes rose from his chair and made his way to Command and Control stumbling twice as the ship shook from near constant impacts. He took a quick assessment of the situation.

"We should be dead," Lt. Rhodes remarked seeing the entire screen now covered in flashing red lights. Rhodes looked up to see the monochrome green symbols on the dradis screen. Two of the Cylon baseships had disappeared. The screen now showed a large box with the word Mercury underneath. The other Baseship signature had resolved into six smaller boxes with "D's" in the center.

"Sir," Rhodes offered with glimmer in his voice, "Two of those baseships have resolved colonial ID's. It's the Battlestar Mercury and what appears to be six Colonial Defenders."

Belu's head instantly looked up as he tried to focus the screen with his bi-focals. "I'll be damned," he muttered. "Get me ship to ship!"

"Can't, communications are fried," Petty Officer Stan reported.

"Emergency channel!" Belu ordered.

Stan shook his head, "Everything's gone sir."

"Dradis just went off-line," Rhodes reported.

Belu reached for the handset and flipped the 1MC, "All hands this is the Commander, move to evac stations, prepare to abandon ship, repeat move to evac stations and prepare to abandon ship. We have friendlies out there standing by to recover you. Good luck and the Gods' grace." The CIC crew looked at the Commander in shock. "Move people!"

The crewmen quickly dropped their headsets and rushed for the two exits trying to make it to the shuttles and escape pods. CIC emptied save for two Marines and Lt. Rhodes. "I thought I gave you an order, Lieutenant," Belu grumbled. He already knew why Rhodes was standing firm at his post.

"Sir," Rhodes said has his mouth went dry and he shook his head. "It's been an honor."

Belu looked up as the Marines stood at attention with their rifles across their chests and chins cocked proud. "The honors' been all mine gentlemen." The ship continued to shake from weapons impacts, but the time between impacts began to grow longer each time until they had almost stopped. Belu walked over to the weapons control panel and set the guns to automatic fire, cycle A.

Port Flight Pod

Miller sat in the back of the Raptor with the uneasy feeling of defeat in the pit of his stomach as the order to abandon ship came across their wireless feed. "Sir, should we wait?" the Raptor pilot asked Miller.

"No, we go and jump to these coordinates as soon as we are clear," Miller handed the piece of paper to the Co-pilot. Miller looked up as the blast doors split apart something caught his eye. Bright yellow streaks belched from from the Mercury's bow cannons towards a cylon basestar. "Where the hell did they come from?"

"I don't know, sir," the Pilot offered as she lifted off and out of the landing bay. A flight of sixteen fresh Mark Sevens flew over their cockpit to engage the Cylons.

"What ship is that?" Miller demanded.

The ECO punched up the recognition codes, "It's the Mercury."

"Old Man was right," Miller muttered.

"Excuse me?" the ECO said.

"Nothing, Miller said grabbing a headset, get me ship to ship," Miller ordered.

CIC Mercury

"Second Basestar destroyed, the others are running," the Watch Officer informed the Commander. Mercury's CIC was small with just a handful of officers needed to man the stations.

"Continue firing sequence and roll and get under the Olympia. Comm, have you gotten Olympia Actual yet?"

"No sir, I've been unable to get any signals, but she's taken a lot of damage," the Watch Officer replied as the ship shook for the first time. "In fact, she's dead in the water, sir. Looks like both sub-lights are offline. I'm detecting shuttles and life boats launching."

"Belu's given the order to abandon ship," Commander Castillo. "Launch SAR raptors, tell medical to stand by to receive causalities. Tell Kesta to continue pressing the enemy raiders and where the hell is the Pacifica."

"Sir, the Cornel was reporting trouble with Pacifica's FTL drives," the Watch officer reminded the Commander."

"Sir, we're getting a request from a Major Loren requesting permission to land Olympia's birds on our decks. He reports they are out of ammo and at bingo fuel," the Crewman at flight ops reported.

"Granted, tell the deck gang to prepare for emergency refit and scramble. Get as many of Olympia's birds refueled, rearmed, and back into the fight as possible," Commander Castillo ordered. She looked up at the dradis screen and took a brief moment to see how the overall battle was going.

"New dradis contact!" the Watch Officer shouted. "Pacifica...she's off by seventeen hundred."

"Well he said their FTL computer wasn't going to be perfect," Castillo reminded her CIC staff. "Good, he's engaging the remaining basestar. Turn the bow battery to assist. And Gods damn it someone get me a channel to Belu...I don't care if you have to tie a string to a tin can!"

"Sir, I have the Olympia XO on the wireless. He's aboard a Raptor that just launched," the Watch Officer said.

"Put him through," Castillo ordered grabbing a handset. The Watch Officer nodded. "This is Mercury Actual."

"This is Major Miller, Olympia XO. Glad to see you," Miller began.

"Have you been boarded?" Castillo demanded.

"Not to my knowledge, Sir," Miller replied. "I was ordered to evac to a set of coordinates on a piece of paper the Commander handed me a few days ago. Said I'd find you there. Looks like you found us."

"Actually we found your other task force. They told us where to find you. Is there Anyway to get to Belu?" Commander Castillo asked.

"Affirmative. We can turn around and I can go tell him," Miller's voice answered knowing the Old Man would be in CIC until his last breath. "We've taken one hell of a pounding. Both our FTL drives and sub-light are off-line."

"Just get him on the line, Mercury out," Castillo slammed the receiver back into its cradle. She looked up as two of the Defenders joined the Pacifica on the last remaining basestar. The others were taking escort positions around the Olympia encase she had been boarded.

The battle was over as the last remaining Raiders jumped away leaving the remaining Basestar to its fate at the guns of the Pacifica and Defenders bracketing the starfish like ship.

"Remaining Cylon ships destroyed, Commander," the Watch officer shouted to a round of cheers in CIC.

"How bad is Olympia?" Castillo demanded.

"CAG, this is Mercury, request you make VID on Olympia's condition," the Flight Officer called over the wireless.

"Roger that," Captain Kesta's garbled voice said. About a minute later, Kesta's still garbled voice responded, "I have VID on several fires and severe structural damage all over the ship. Looks like there have been at least a half dozen explosive decompressions along the port flight pod and one of the struts has a whole section blown out. Her guns still look relatively in tact, but her belly is pot marked from weapons impact. Looks like Mcken's face."

"Hey," Lt. McKen retorted over the wireless. "Not like you don't have some acne scars..."

"Gentlemen, another time please. Coordinate rescue efforts, get as many life boats recovered as we can," Castillo ordered. "Spin up the FTL drives in case the Cylons show back up."

Olympia CIC

Miller stormed into the empty CIC, "Your never going to guess who just showed up."

"The Mercury," Belu answered. "We saw her resolve just before we lost dradis."

"Have you made wireless contact?"

"No," Belu answered. "Wireless, for all practical purposes, has been destroyed."

"What is the Mercury doing?"

"Currently involved in rescue operations. Our birds are landing there as we speak," Miller answered.

"And I thought I ordered you..."

"Well I got another order from another Commander...I hope you all decide who gets to be Admiral, otherwise this is going to get confusing," Miller joked.

Belu was not in the mood for humor at the moment. "How did they find us?"

"Apparently our other task force found them first..."

"At the other supply site," Belu answered his own question.

Lt. Rhodes grabbed the handset and flipped the 1MC, "All hands to your stations, cancel abandon ship, repeat return to damage control stations."

"You can't cancel the order to abandon ship," Belu snorted. "It's against regs."

"Tell Major Grant he can arrest me later," Rhodes snapped back.

A squad of Marines stormed in from both sides of the CIC with guns drawn and ordering everyone to the floor. The two remaining Olympia Marine's held their ground pointing their rifles in the faces of two of the raiding Marines.

"What the hell is this?" Belu barked.

"Stand down," a familiar voice ordered as Commander Castillo walked into the CIC.

"Daphne," Belu called out walking over to the one time XO of the ship. "Forgive me," Belu said clutching his right wrist. "I think it's broken."

"We brought a raptor full of med techs and two more are on their way with engineering support teams to try and get your FTL drives fixed so we can get the hell out of here. The Cylons will be back to finish us off," Commander Castillo offered.

"Then what the hell are you doing here? You know this ship is dead in the water. I just gave the order to abandon ship..."

"And we're picking them up and flying 'em back. We don't have room for your crew on our ship, but I'm sure the Pacifica could use the extra man power," Castillo said.

"Pacifica, I thought she was decommissioned," Rhodes said.

"She was, about three months ago," Miller recalled.

"Yes, but they hadn't gotten too far along on the stripping process. She still had FTL and weapon systems when we found her," Castillo answered. "Only the Cylons got there first. It's a long story, I'll explain later. The short version is that I have half my crew over there along with a thousand civilians that have no clue what they are doing."

"That explains the missing Battlestar at the boneyard," Belu said. "We conducted a survey mission there about a week ago. In fact we need..."

"Already got 'em," Castillo said. "We beat the Cylons to the Deacon outpost. Loaded about two years worth of supplies and enough tooling to make a small fleet of Mark One Vipers."

"Did you say mark one? I thought the cheat sheets said Mark Twos?" Miller recalled.

"Ours said the same thing...but when we got there, they were the dies for the Mark Ones. Lucky for you we found a couple engineers on board a sub light civilian transport. They are already busy working out how to make a Mark One out perform a Mark Seven," Castillo said. "Now let's get that wrist looked at."


End file.
